


Fields of Athenry

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Angst, Angst and Feels, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Ireland, OTP Feels, Oral Sex, Roman Catholicism, Sexual Tension, Sexy Makeouts In Literally the World's Least Appropriate Place For It, Sexy Priests, Shameless Smut, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 15:13:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 34,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4105525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>IRELAND, 1920.  Abigail Griffin, a healer and surgeon, lost her husband four years ago in the Easter Rising – a violent rebellion to end rule by the Crown and secure a free Ireland.  Marcus Kane was an Irish soldier who fought in the Rising on the side of the British.  Haunted by the blood of his own countrymen on his hands, he fled his old life for the priesthood, praying that faith would wash away his sins.  When fate brings them both to the tiny rural island of St. Brigid, they realize there is nowhere they can run from the past – and beneath the echoes of darkness and violence that haunt them, they begin to feel the stirrings of something more . . .</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Woman In the Boat

**Author's Note:**

> By a lonely prison wall  
> I heard a young girl calling  
> Michael they are taking you away  
> For you stole Trevelyan's corn  
> So the young might see the morn  
> Now a prison ship lies waiting in the bay
> 
> Low lie the fields of Athenry  
> Where once we watched the small free birds fly  
> Our love was on the wing  
> We had dreams and songs to sing  
> It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry
> 
> By a lonely prison wall  
> I heard a young man calling  
> Nothing matters, Mary, when you're free,  
> Against the Famine and the Crown  
> I rebelled, they cut me down  
> Now you must raise our child with dignity
> 
> Low lie the fields of Athenry  
> Where once we watched the small free birds fly  
> Our love was on the wing  
> We had dreams and songs to sing  
> It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry
> 
> By a lonely harbor wall  
> She watched the last star falling  
> As the prison ship sailed out against the sky  
> Sure she'll wait and hope and pray  
> For her love in Botany Bay  
> It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry
> 
> Low lie the fields of Athenry  
> Where once we watched the small free birds fly  
> Our love was on the wing  
> We had dreams and songs to sing  
> It's so lonely 'round the Fields of Athenry
> 
> \--“Fields of Athenry” by Pete St. John

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which a lady doctor arrives on the island from Dublin and the village priest injures his leg.

**TUESDAY**

** **

She arrived by boat on a Tuesday, with the post.

Young Miller tied the ferry up and piled her traveling cases on the dock, while Old Miller gave her his hand and escorted her as she stepped out onto dry land. Her new home. She was startled at the cluster of at least a dozen people standing around near the dock, seemingly doing nothing; she had no idea that this was far larger than the crowd Old Miller and Young Miller usually got, unless it was the Christmas post. But everyone wanted to be the first to catch a glimpse of the new doctor. They were not disappointed.

“A lady doctor,” wives would say to their husbands over tea. “Just fancy. And all the way from Dublin, too.”

“Foolishness,” the husbands would grumble in reply around a mouthful of bannock. “We’ve none of such modern notions here.”

But St. Brigid was an island where very little happened, which meant that no matter how steadily any resident feigned elaborate disinterest in their new lady doctor from the city, they could only hold out for so long before eventually inquiring of those that had been there and obtaining all the details. She was small, and pretty, with dark hair and eyes, a quick firm step, and ever so many boxes and cases. Her clothes were smart and tidy, but not too smart for the island, and not so very new as to arouse the ill-feeling of her neighbors. The ladies declared she looked quite as she ought. The gentlemen harrumphed to each other in the Kings’ Arms and wondered what on earth had possessed Jackson to retire and leave his medical practice to a woman he barely knew. Highly recommended she might have been, but dammit, Jackson should have known. Foolishness, they said. Utter foolishness.

Abigail Griffin was used to sideways glances from male patients, and had she known what a stir she was creating, it’s unlikely she would have cared. She did not want interest, or pity. She wanted to escape. An atmosphere of general hostility suited her; the more the village of St. Brigid stared and whispered, the more they would keep away, and the less she would have to talk. Talk was the last thing Abigail wanted.

Nobody who saw her step out of Old Miller’s boat, in her smart-but-not-too-smart woolen skirt and jacket, surrounded by packing cases, looking around with eyes that hardly seemed to take in her surroundings, happened to notice what should have been the most obvious thing about her. They remarked on her hair and her clothes and her job qualifications and her daughter (not on the boat with her, must be away at school) and how soon it would take before she became bored and left St. Brigid to return to the city.

They did not see the darkness inside her.

It was three days before she finally met the only person on the island who carried his own darkness inside him and could recognize her own. Three days of peering and peeking and spying and looking at her before she was really, truly _seen_. That was how long it took for Father Marcus Kane to return from his visit to Bishop Thelonious and learn that the island’s woman doctor had finally arrived.

 

**FRIDAY**

He had intended to introduce himself to her properly, once she was settled into her cottage and unpacked. He had a routine with new parishioners (what few there were, anyway; very few people on the island came and went). He would drop by in the early afternoon with a basket of oat biscuits and fresh butter from Mrs. Monroe’s farm up the road, which generally earned him an invitation to stay to tea and get to know the village’s new residents so that when the locals peppered him with questions, he could appear as knowledgeable as the parish priest ought to be.

That was the plan.

He was prepared to meet Abigail Griffin. He had the basket of oat biscuits packed and ready, lacking only Mrs. Monroe’s fresh butter, to be fetched on the way. He was ready.

But Marcus Kane’s God laughed at his best-laid plans. And so of course it happened that when a soft patch of wet earth in the field between the rectory and Monroe’s farm caught him by the ankle, pulling him down with a hard twisting crack onto a cluster of boulders, the only soul to be found on that road was the lady doctor, who happened upon him as he grunted and swore and uttered a magnificent rainbow of obscenities towards the heavens as he attempted to free his trapped leg.

“I had no idea they taught such colorful language in seminary,” he heard a cool, laughing voice remark from somewhere behind him, and his face flushed with mortification.

“I’m all right,” he snapped, a little gruffly.

“Is that so? Because from here, it looks rather like your leg is caught between those rocks,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t pull at it like that if I were you. You’ll snap your ankle.”

“I’m fine,” he said shortly. “I don’t need help.”

“Don’t be an idiot,” she said firmly, and he was both startled and a little intrigued by it; nobody had dared to speak to him that way in a very long time. He risked a look backwards at his would-be rescuer, and saw a petite woman in a green dress with masses of soft brown hair tied in a loose braid that draped over her shoulder. She was regarding him thoughtfully, her head tilted to one side, and he felt himself grow faintly uncomfortable under that direct, appraising stare. He turned away again and made another attempt to free his leg, but it was no use. Any attempt to move it caused a sharp pain to shoot through his calf and thigh.

“Fine,” he admitted after a moment. “All right. Fine. Yes. It’s caught. I would . . . appreciate your assistance.”

She was at his side in an instant, capable hands moving the rocks aside to free his leg, which she gently lifted free and stretched straight out in front of him. She saw him wince as she set his leg down. “Let me see if it’s broken,” she said, and without waiting for his leave she rolled his woolen trousers up to the knee and began to knead and press, fingers firm and decisive against his skin. “My name is Abigail Griffin,” she said, eyes fixed on his leg, “though I assume you knew that already.”

“Marcus Kane,” he said in response.

“ _Father_ Marcus Kane, by the look of that collar,” she said wryly, and he found himself blushing again – _why was he blushing?_ – as though he had inadvertently revealed something by forgetting that one small word.

“I was on my way to see you,” he said.

“Oh, that’s terrible,” she said. “Then that makes this my fault. Although you were headed in altogether the wrong direction, since you must know that I’m down that way” – she pointed – “in Jackson’s old cottage on the cliff. The sea road would have taken you right there.”

“I was headed up to Monroe’s farm first,” he said. “For butter.”

“Butter?”

“For you. For the biscuits.”

“What biscuits?”

“I have oat biscuits,” he said. “In a basket.”

“How nice.”

“I was bringing them to you. I mean I meant to bring them to you, after I got the butter.” Good Lord, why was this suddenly so difficult? Was it the soft, insistent pressure of her hands against his leg, the strange intimacy of it when her fingertips brushed, feather-light, against the downy dark hair on his skin? Was it the clean green scent of her, rising from the nape of her neck in waves, or those rich brown eyes, the color of good soil, which seemed somehow haunted by shadows even in this bright daylight, when she was smiling? “I bring oat biscuits and butter,” he said, rather helplessly, “when new folk move in.”

“Well, I’m very pleased to inform you that your leg is not broken,” she said, looking up at him, a half-smile tugging at the side of her rosy mouth. “Does that mean I still get my biscuits? I have butter already, as it happens, if that saves you the rest of your trip up the hill. And you’ve one rather bad scrape I’d like to get cleaned. Do you have anything in the way of bandages at the rectory, or should I run back to my cottage and meet you?”

“No, I can rummage up a bandage, I believe,” said Father Marcus, and she smiled.

“Good, then,” she said. “Let me help you up.”

He protested at first, but was not quite able to get his leg underneath him properly on his own, and fell back to the ground twice more while she looked on with her arms folded, regarding him with a mix of exasperation and amusement. It was reassuring, in its way, since she would certainly not be enjoying this so much if his injury were serious. Finally he relented and allowed her to stoop down and help lift him to his feet. She was a small woman, but surprisingly strong, and her grip on his arms as she hoisted him upright was remarkable. He thought of those firm fingers setting the broken bones of grown men, snapping dislocated muscles back into place. He thought what a gift she must be in the birthing room, with those small strong hands which could stroke the forehead of a laboring woman and deliver sweet comfort one moment, then reach inside to grasp a baby and deliver him safely into the light the next. If he had not known, when she said her name, that she was Abigail Griffin the new village doctor, he would have known the first minute she touched him. The power in her hands was unmistakable.

He found himself allowing her to support him as they walked back up the road a short distance to the gravel path leading to the rectory. She offered herself for him to lean on, and he surprised himself by accepting. Surprising because Marcus Kane was not a man who took comfort when it was offered. He was the priest, the counselor, the father of this village, which meant he was the shoulder; he was never the one who was leaning. And he towered over this brisk little woman by more than a head. And yet he took the arm she offered, and he gratefully leaned his weight against her warm small body, and he thought to himself that it was a mercy he had taken a vow of celibacy when he joined the priesthood or he might find himself in some danger from Abigail Griffin.

But she was a respectable widow. And he was a priest. They were both entirely safe from each other.

Entirely safe.

He was sure of it.

He was almost entirely sure of it.

They reached the door to the rectory, and Marcus pushed it open so she could lead him into the white-walled, cozy little kitchen. He sat down on one of the wooden chairs and pointed to a cupboard in the corner where a heap of odds and ends included a few clean bandages. He did not know whether it was because she was a doctor, and used to working in strangers’ homes, or whether perhaps it was simply the kind of woman she was, but from the instant she entered the rectory she moved about inside it as though she belonged there. She filled the kettle, placed it over the fire, pulled a tin bowl from the faded blue cabinet full of dishes and set it on the table with the bandage and an old yellow tea towel. Then she knelt down beside him, lifted his leg and rested it on another chair, pulling his trousers back up around his knee again. He tried not to think about the sight of his rumpled, unmade bed with its blue-and-white striped ticking mattress, visible in the farthest corner of the cottage on the other side of a wide-open doorway. He tried not to think about how oddly domestic the scene was as she poured the steaming water from the kettle into the tin bowl and dipped the old yellow tea towel in it to clean the dirt from the gash on his leg with warm water.

“Hold still, Father,” she said absently as she gently coaxed the gravel and dirt from his wound with her firm, gentle hands.

“Marcus,” he said. “Please. Call me Marcus.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s a very good idea,” she said with a dry smile. “I’m already a pariah for being a lady doctor from the big city. How on earth will I fit in once it gets around that I’ve touched the priest’s bare leg _and_ called him by his Christian name?” Cut now cleaned of blood and grime, she wrapped the bandage firmly around it and rolled the cuff of his trousers back down. “Good as new,” she said. “Biscuits?”

“On the windowsill,” he said, pointing, and she trotted over to collect the cloth-draped basket.

“My fee for services rendered,” she said, slipping her arm through the basket. “Will you come by tomorrow for tea and share them with me?”

“I would be delighted,” he said, trying to sound formal, trying to sound grave, trying to sound like _Father Marcus Kane,_ trying not to smile at her with too much eagerness. “I’m very pleased to meet you at last.”

“I’m very pleased I happened to be walking by,” she said, “or you might still be lying on the side of the road, helpless as a three-legged cat.” He made a slight sound of protest at that, but only a slight one, since she was smiling.

“Until tomorrow, then, Mrs. Griffin,” he said, pleased at himself for how very little he noticed the way the sun filtered in around her where she stood in his doorway, burnishing her hair with flickers of copper and gold and setting her creamy skin aglow.

“Until tomorrow, Father Kane,” she said with a nod, and he watched her walk down the gravel path to the main road, where she turned left, toward the sea, and vanished from his sight.


	2. The House By the Sea

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the priest and the doctor drink tea, a red dress is worn at exactly the wrong (or right) moment, and the Cycle of Readings for the Liturgical Year causes mischief.

** **

**SATURDAY**

The house by the sea was not one building, but two – a low white cottage with a cheerful red door, where Jackson had lived, and the converted stone barn next door which had been his surgery. The vast battery of suitcases and boxes that the Millers had ferried to the island for her went almost entirely into this second building. She had only one trunk for herself. She had not minded in the least leaving Dublin behind, leaving the past behind. There was so little that meant anything to her now. There was so little worth the trouble of holding onto it. Her husband was dead. Her daughter had become a stranger. Of what use to Abigail Griffin were the books and vases and paintings that had filled their house in the city? Of what use were memories? No, she had come here to leave that behind her. Here, she was not a mother or a wife – or even, in any meaningful sense, a woman. She was a doctor. She was here to work. That was all there was.

That was almost certainly all there was.

Still, she spent nearly forty minutes in front of the cracked old mirror in the bedroom of the cottage, trying different things with her hair before sighing, giving up, and settling on the same plain braid she wore every day. It was silly, after all. It was only tea. It was only the parish priest. It was a gesture of kindness extended to every new village tenant, he had said so himself. The priest could not possibly care what her hair looked like.

By rights, then, she oughtn’t to care what _his_ looked like either, how soft and thick and dark it was, like the pelt of a forest animal. She definitely ought not to pause in front of the mirror, wondering what it would feel like to run her hands through Father Kane’s hair.

It was foolish. All of this was foolish. And Abigail Griffin was not a foolish woman. She had not come this far, she had not fled her old life and left the past behind for this godforsaken island, only to find herself developing a schoolgirl crush on the parish priest.

 _You are the doctor,_ she said to her reflection, more firmly than she felt. _You are a person of significance in this community and must conduct yourself accordingly. Control yourself._

Then Father Kane knocked on the cheerful red door of the white cottage, and Abigail’s heart leapt in her chest, and she was extremely disappointed in herself.

He did not stay long to tea, which was both a sadness and a relief to her, and their conversation was of very little significance. She insisted upon seating him by the fire, serving him in the good chair and giving his wounded leg a thorough examination before settling down in the second-best chair across from him, tea and biscuits on a small table in easy reach. They talked about the weather. They talked about the changes she had made to the cottage – did she know that Jackson had loaned out his grandmother’s favorite painting of the Virgin Mary to hang in the rectory, yes she did, did she want it back, she was welcome to it if she wanted it back, no she didn’t, thank you very much, the rectory was welcome to keep it, she liked that wall empty to catch the sunlight from the window. She was effusive in her compliments towards Mrs. Monroe’s oat biscuits and decidedly more circumspect in her feelings about Mrs. Monroe, and Father Kane came away with the clear impression that he might well be the only person on the island of St. Brigid that Abigail Griffin actually liked. The tiny thrill this gave him was unworthy of a priest, unworthy of a man whose job it was to build community among the people he served – but still, he could not shake it.

Abigail Griffin was a singular woman. There was a fog of sadness around her at moments, something shadowy and haunted inside her dark eyes. He could observe it in her because it was so very like the matching darkness within himself. He _recognized_ her, in some strange way. But he knew, with the certainty of one in the presence of a kindred spirit, that she was less sad around him than she had been in a long time. He could see it so clearly in the way she seemed to surprise herself every time she smiled or laughed – as if she were only just now learning how to use those muscles again after a long period of atrophy.

She politely tolerated everyone else, but Marcus Kane, she liked.

It should not have mattered.

But it did.

As she watched him walk away, Abigail thought about his soft dark hair again, and chided herself for it. _He is the priest, and you are the doctor. You care for their bodies, he cares for their souls. There is too much work to do here for you to give in to these foolish daydreams. Stop this. Stop this now or it will end in sorrow._

 

**SUNDAY**

It must have been deliberate.

He was almost sure of it.

She had been on the island six days, had made only a handful of acquaintances and no friends, and had not even had the opportunity to treat a patient yet, if you didn’t count himself and his bandaged ankle. She was from Dublin, which made her as foreign around these parts as if she had arrived in St. Brigid from the moon.

And yet there she was, sitting demurely in her pew, kneeling, head bent, the picture of a proper Catholic widow – in a scarlet dress.

It was a perfectly modest scarlet dress, even the fussiest old spinster would have to admit. And she was swathed head to toe against the chill sea winds in a thick, brown woolen cloak that obscured the incriminating fabric from anyone sitting behind her.

And she had sat in the front row.

Which meant the red dress was for him.

It must have been deliberate. She was a clever woman, she understood the ways of small towns. She would not arrive at her very first Mass in her new home wearing flaming crimson by accident.  Not in that gray stone church, surrounded by those brown-and-gray-clad people, alleviated here and there only by dull browns and greens.  She was like a red rose someone had dropped onto a dusty gravel road.  She lit up the whole room. 

It took everything the priest had not to close the Lectionary on the pulpit in front of him, step down from the altar to the pew where she sat, and bury his face in the impossibly rich garnet red of her woolen bodice.  She was the most _alive_ thing in the entire room.  It was like a sharp sea wind swept through the building, throwing everything into sharper relief. 

And then, because Marcus Kane’s God was a sly trickster who took pleasure in making his beloved son suffer, he opened the Lectionary to read the Gospel, trying very hard not to see the splash of red directly in his line of vision, and he pulled out the notes for the sermon he had written weeks ago, before Abigail Griffin entered into his life.

 _Of course,_ he thought bitterly, as he heard his voice, from a distance, utter the words “A reading from the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, according to Luke.” _Of course it would be this story. Today of all days. Of course it would._

> _“And Jesus spoke a parable to them, that we ought always to pray, and never to faint, saying:_ _There was a judge in a certain city, who feared not God, nor regarded man._ _And there was a certain widow in that city, and she came to him for justice, pleading: Avenge me of my adversary._ _And for a long time, he would not hear her. But afterwards he said within himself: Although I fear not God, nor regard man, yet because this widow is troublesome to me, I will avenge her, lest she weary me by her continual persistence._ _And the Lord said: Hear the words of the unjust judge._ _Will not God avenge his chosen who cry to him day and night: and will he have patience in their regard?_ _I say to you, that he will, with all speed. But yet the Son of man, when he cometh, shall he find, think you, faith on earth?”_

All through Mass, the slice of scarlet visible through the folds of her cloak distracted him. He thought about the red dress when he stood at the pulpit to read from Scripture, and he thought about the red dress when he lifted the bread above his head during the Eucharistic Prayer, and he thought about the red dress when she rose gracefully from her knees to step forward into the aisle for Holy Communion. His hand shook just the faintest bit as he reverently placed the Body of Christ onto her soft pink tongue. It felt as intimate as kissing her, and the flutter in the pit of his stomach did not abate until he had watched her all the way back to her seat and realized Old Miller was standing in front of him, patiently waiting, tongue extended, and he cursed himself (and the red dress) for his distraction.

He had no idea how he managed to survive without utterly humiliating himself.  But finally the recessional hymn arrived, as the recessional hymn always does, and as he strode solemnly down the center aisle he was careful not to be distracted by the flash of red in the corner of his vision. But it caught up to him at the church doors, as the congregation slowly filed out one by one. He _felt_ her coming before he saw her, felt the red coming closer and closer, until Sinclair the baker and Old Miller the ferryman doffed their hats and stepped aside, and the scarlet dress with the confounding woman inside it arrived in front of him.

“The Parable of the Persistent Widow,” she said with a wry smile. “Was that really today’s Gospel or did you choose it for me?”

“It was in the Lectionary,” he said. “I’ll show you if you don’t believe me.”

"Does that make you the unjust judge, then?" she said lightly.  "I'll come pounding on your door day in, day out, until I wear you down entirely and you give in to all my demands."

“I'm not entirely sure that was the moral of the story,” he said. “That’s a very festive dress you’re wearing, by the way.”

If he expected a blush or apology, he didn’t get one. She just smiled, as though the scarlet dress were a private joke between them, and then the line of parishioners exiting the church pressed forward and swept her off before he could say anything more.

He caught up with her a hundred yards or so down the road back towards her cottage, where she had fallen in with a cluster of other parishioners, peppering her with questions. She seemed, not unfriendly exactly, but reticent. Unwilling to talk. She wrapped the brown cloak tightly around her and did not make eye contact. He walked up to the group and joined them easily, naturally, and they moved aside to make room for him. He wasn’t sure, he thought he might have been imagining it, but he thought perhaps he saw a flicker of gratitude in her dark eyes, though he told himself not to read anything into it. He was, after all, the only person here she had really met.

“And you’ve no husband with you?” asked Mrs. Monroe, who was blunt as they come and did not care who she offended in her thirst for information. Mrs. Monroe was the central repository for gossip on the island of St. Brigid and would never have lived down the disgrace if someone else had learned the pretty lady doctor’s sad life story and spread the news around before she had had a chance to hear, and then embellish, the story herself.

“No,” said Abigail in a toneless voice. “My husband is dead.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Mrs. Monroe. “Very recently, was it?”

“Just a little over four years,” she said. “I don’t know what you mean by ‘recent.’ There are times it seems it was another lifetime ago, and there are times it might have been yesterday. I am not entirely certain a loss of that kind obeys the ordinary dictates of how we measure time.”

This properly silenced Mrs. Monroe, who was too literal to have any idea what Abigail meant, but Abigail hadn’t been talking to Mrs. Monroe, and Father Marcus knew it. She did not look at him – she stared straight ahead down the sea road – but he knew who her words were for.

“Were you a proper doctor in Dublin?” asked Young Miller. “In hospital and everything?"

“I was trained in one,” she said, softening slightly – she seemed to like Young Miller – “but they wouldn’t give me work. So I did a bit of everything. I trained in hospital as a surgeon, but I also studied with a village healer outside the city and I spent many years as a midwife. Jackson passed his practice on to me because he thought it would be a help to the village that I have more than one set of skills.”

“Dublin, you said?” Sinclair asked curiously, and there was something in his tone that created a little shimmer of tension around Abigail Griffin. Father Marcus watched her small strong hands clench into fists at her side.

“Yes,” she said. “That’s where I lived.”

“And you lost your husband four years ago?” he pressed. She did not respond, but nodded. “The Rising, was it?” Sinclair went on, his tone almost casual, but all of them froze, stopped dead in their tracks. Old Miller, Young Miller and Mrs. Monroe glared at Sinclair as though he had committed an unspeakable breach of etiquette, but Marcus hardly noticed. He was watching Abigail, who had transmuted into a stone statue. She was frozen, there in the road. She neither looked at them nor moved.

“You were widowed in the Rising,” said Sinclair again, and it wasn’t a question this time. Marcus felt his heart begin to pound in his chest, begging her, _please say no, please say no, please don’t let it be true._ She was silent. She did not answer, but of course, she didn’t have to. It was written all over her white, stricken face.

“Hush now, Sinclair,” said Mrs. Monroe, finally gathering her wits about her enough to shoulder her way back in, and Marcus blessed her for her noisy lack of tact at that moment. “We don’t speak of such things here.”

“You ought to know better, Sinclair,” chided Old Miller in agreement. “The walls have ears on this island.”

“What do you mean?” asked Abigail, stirring herself with great effort out of her reverie. Old Miller shrugged.

“We don’t like to speak ill of a man of the cloth in front of one of his brothers,” he said, nodding at Marcus, “but Father Kane’s one of us by now, he’s used to it. What I meant to say was, everyone in St. Brigid knows that when the Rising came, Bishop Thelonious –“

“ _Bishop_ Thelonious?” said Abigail, astonished, and something in the tone of her voice startled Marcus. There was shock, surprise, a twinge of what might, maybe, have been disgust – and, most puzzlingly, there was _fear._ “Does he come here often?” she asked, her tone deceptively casual, and Marcus knew he was the only one who heard the quiver of apprehension in it.

“A few times a year,” he said, and watched her whole body soften with relief, and wondered what had passed between Abigail Griffin and Bishop Thelonious that made her so desperately afraid to see him. Or for him to see her. “Do you know him?” Marcus couldn’t help asking. She began walking again, the others following close behind her, and he wondered if it was because she felt less conspicuous, less obvious, when she was moving. He wondered if he had been watching her too closely for her own comfort when they stood on the side of the road.

“I . . .” She stopped, then nodded. “Yes,” she said. “I did, once. He was only Father Thelonious then. I had no idea he was the bishop of your diocese.”

“He was promoted after the Rising,” Sinclair chimed in helpfully. “Hasn’t been bishop long. It was a surprise. He was young for it.”

“They say he got himself a bishop’s mitre by doing a service for the Crown,” said Old Miller. “But nobody knows what.”

“I do,” said Abigail, without looking at anyone, stepping carefully down the rough road, oblivious to the startled faces behind her. “He broke the seal of the confessional.”

“He what?”

“He was given a piece of information in Confession,” she said, her dark eyes flashing. “Rather than keeping it between himself and the Lord, he chose to whisper it into the ear of the British general. Sixteen men were executed on the strength of it, though it must be a great consolation to him that he received a promotion in exchange for the cost of his soul.” And she stormed off, walking so quickly she was very nearly running, every muscle and sinew of her body tensed in barely-contained rage.

“Well, now you’ve done it,” snapped Mrs. Monroe, smacking Sinclair on the back of the head. He winced.

“What did I do?” he retorted defensively.

“It was obvious she was a widow of the Rising from the day she set foot on the island,” said Mrs. Monroe loftily, though she herself had not had any idea Mrs. Griffin was a widow of the Rising until they had all just now discovered it together. “And then you went and reminded her of it. The poor thing.”

“Well, I didn’t know it would upset her, did I?” said Sinclair. “And besides, it wasn’t the Rising that upset her, it was the bishop. And that wasn’t my fault.”

The four of them trotted down the sea road back towards their houses, amicably arguing, depositing Father Marcus at his doorstep with a quartet of distracted nods and waves and continuing on without noticing that the priest had gone pale and silent.

_“He was given a piece of information in Confession."  
_

Oh, please, no.

He had come too far, he had buried his past too deeply, to survive its resurfacing now.  And in her, of all people.  No.  No.  It could not be.  He had locked the old Marcus Kane away in an iron chest underneath the floorboards and built himself anew and his past was dead, his former self was dead, he could not go back to that place.

_"Sixteen men were executed on the strength of it.”_

It could not possibly be true.


	3. The Man In the Church

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the bishop becomes suspicious, Octavia's baby is born and Abigail goes to Confession.

****

**ORDINARY TIME**

He pulled the trunk from underneath his bed, hands shaking so badly he could hardly unfasten the latches to lift it open. He clawed through it wildly, feeling his breath come fast, pulling books and papers and old sweaters and blankets out of it until it was empty enough that he could reach the little grosgrain ribbon that lifted out the trunk’s false bottom.

There were only two things hidden underneath the fabric-covered panel that concealed the trunk’s secret compartment – a British regimental uniform (technically, he supposed, now considered stolen property of the Crown, though no one had ever asked for it back), and a scrap of paper.

The uniform still smelled of sweat and gunpowder. He had not washed it. It felt important, somehow, to retain that scent of smoke. He had left the execution yard, handed in his rifle and walked away. There had been no formal process of discharge, in the chaos of the Rising’s aftermath. No one had asked questions. They had simply let him go. He walked out of the jail in his red uniform, to which the smoke from the gunshots that killed sixteen insurgents still clung, and he had returned home, taken off his clothes, folded them up, and hidden them inside the false bottom of his father’s old trunk. He never touched it again. He only lifted the false bottom panel of the trunk once more, three days later, to place the scrap of paper inside it, pinned to the breast of the uniform.

He unpinned it now, with trembling fingers, and he read the sixteen names he had written on it.

There it was.

_JACOB GRIFFIN. AGE THIRTY-SIX. COUNTY DUBLIN._

Bad enough that she had lost her husband in the Rising, not knowing that Marcus Kane had fought on the opposite side, against the rebels. Bad enough the gulf of bloodshed that ran between them which would have made them enemies four years ago (and maybe even now).

But it was worse. It was so much worse than that.

Those sixteen ghosts haunted him. He had stood there, shoulder to shoulder with British men, and he had hoisted his rifle, and they had not known, none of them had known, when they faced the red-clad firing squad, that Marcus Kane was Irish too. That he was kin to them.  He was of their land.  He was their brother.  How much worse it would have been if they had known. How much deeper the hate in their defiant eyes as he pulled the trigger over and over, again and again, until all of them were dead.

He had made a decision. He had looked at the world around him, calmly, dispassionately, assessing the landscape, and he had calculated that the republican forces lacked the manpower to mount a significant enough rebellion to enact any real change. And so he had done what he had always done, all his life; he had weighed the odds and cast his lot with the winning side.

Well, he had won. The Crown had crushed the Rising without blinking an eye. He was not the ragged unshaven prisoner at the firing squad, he was the clean handsome redcoat holding the gun. He had won, and his reward was the job of killing his own countrymen in cold blood for the crime of desiring freedom.

Marcus Kane was many things, but he was neither vengeful nor violent.  He understood that to the Crown, this was a kind of justice, but for himself, he could not see it that way.  There was no nobility in it.  No glory.  No, nor even any justice.  It was a gesture, a threat.  Sixteen men died so that the Crown could say to the rest of the nation, "This is what will happen to you."  And Marcus had fired one of the rifles, which made him complicit in that threat.  He knew he could never take a man's life again.  So he left. And it had been his old friend Thelonious, a soldier-turned-priest and the wisest man Marcus knew, who had given him a second chance. The Jesuits had taken him in. God had taken him in. He had confessed his sins – the blood of sixteen Irish patriots that stained his hands – to no one but Thelonious, who, under the current political climate, had counseled discretion. When he was made bishop, his first act was to give Marcus the only thing in the world that he wanted.

Escape.

St. Brigid, off the western coast of Kerry, in the bay near Ballinskelligs, was about as far from Dublin as Marcus Kane could get – though, to keep the village from asking too many questions, Bishop Thelonious had given out that Marcus was the son of a Killarney shopkeeper. He couldn’t hide the Dublin in his bearing or his voice, but they knew only that he had lived for many years in the city and since left. They thought he had spent the past years back home in Killarney with his mother. They had no idea he had even been present in Dublin during the Rising, let alone that he was a traitor.

He had kept the list, and the uniform, as a talisman. As a reminder. It was his old self, it was the old Marcus Kane, locked inside this trunk underneath his bed. He was no longer that man. He had built a life here over the past four years. He had been safe.

And then a dark-haired woman with penetrating eyes and a scarlet dress underneath her dull brown cloak had stepped off Old Miller’s ferryboat and brought Marcus Kane’s past back with her.

He thought of the way her hands felt on his skin as she checked to see if his leg was broken, and he thought of her crooked half-smile as she poured him tea and thoughtfully munched on oat biscuits, and he thought of the way it had felt just for a fraction of a heartbeat to touch her mouth when he placed the Host on her tongue, and suddenly it was _her_ there, in the jailyard, her dark hair and red skirts flying in the wind, her eyes defiant, and he felt himself squeeze the trigger, heard it catch, felt the brutal jolt as it kicked back against his shoulder, and watched her small body crumple to the ground as a trickle of red blood fluttered away through the stones beneath her like a ribbon coming loose from her dress.

He lurched over to the bedroom windowsill, pushed open the glass, leaned outside, and was suddenly, violently sick.

 

**ADVENT**

“How is the island adjusting to its new lady doctor?” asked the bishop, sipping his tea. They were sitting opposite each other in the rectory’s formal parlor and drinking from the rectory’s fine Belleek china, both of which Marcus only ever used when Thelonious came to visit twice a year. The rest of the time, tinware mugs and the overstuffed chair by the kitchen fire were all the formality he required. But for the bishop, concessions must be made.

“She has made quite an impression,” said Marcus carefully, unsure how to proceed. That Abigail Griffin knew the bishop had been made quite clear, but no one in the village had been able to extract any more of the story than what she had told them that morning on the sea road, so he remained at a loss as to how well the bishop knew _her._ And he could not ask.

Everyone in the village knew when Bishop Thelonious was coming. He visited once during Lent and once during Advent to concelebrate Mass with Father Kane, and the church was always at its most crowded on those days, the entire congregation spruced and shined and in their best coats. Abigail, unsurprisingly, had been absent. She had sent word with young Bellamy Blake to let Father Kane know she had gone down to Blake Farm to tend to his sister Octavia, whose pregnancy had been a difficult one so far. He knew this was not a lie – Octavia’s husband Lincoln was in church next to Bellamy, and they wore the look of men who had not slept from worry in several days – but it was also rather convenient.

It had been nearly six months since that day at the church, and though he saw Abigail several times a week, he had shut down all attempts on her part at establishing a friendship. She had invited him to tea or to dinner several times afterwards, but he had rebuffed her at every turn, and finally – puzzled, and a little sad – she had simply stopped asking. It was excruciating work, being crisp and cold with her whenever they crossed paths, but it was the only thing he could do. He could not soften. He could not be her friend. He could not allow her to like him, to care about him. Not when he had her husband’s blood on his hands. No, this was his penance, and he bore it willingly. He had earned it. He had sinned against his God and his country, and the cost was his heart. Very well, then. He would deny himself the pleasure of her smile, her company, her dark eyes. He would allow her to hate him. He would welcome it. It was no less than he deserved.

He looked up from his tea and saw Bishop Thelonious regarding him with a serious expression, and he felt his cheeks grow warm with embarrassment under the older man’s appraising stare.

“On you, as well as on the village, it seems,” was all the bishop said, but it was enough.

“She is a very competent woman,” said Marcus defensively. “I’m sure there were some of the older folk with reservations about her when she arrived, but she has more than allayed them. There was a rash of influenza this autumn in the nursery school but the island did not lose a single child. After that, I suspect they decided she could be a witch for all they cared, they were more than willing to let her stay. She is exceptionally skilled.”

“Watch yourself, Marcus,” said the bishop, and his voice was deceptively casual. “When you are so careful to speak about her only in terms of her professional accomplishments, you make me wonder very much what you might be hiding.”

“I hide nothing,” said Marcus, perfectly matching the bishop’s light tone with steel inside it. “You are my bishop, my confessor, and my brother in Christ. There must be only honesty and truth between us. If one of us were to deceive the other,” and he looked directly into the bishop’s eyes, “what a terrible sin that would be.”

Bishop Thelonious met his eyes without flinching, and for a moment they did nothing but regard each other in silence. _You broke the seal of the confessional,_ Marcus cried out silently. The thought still made him ill. Because if it were true? If the deaths of those sixteen men were somehow connected to such a hideous betrayal of someone who came to the bishop for help? Marcus Kane did not know how he could live with that. He did not understand how the bishop could either.

“Thank you for the tea,” said Bishop Thelonious, rising to leave. “It was a pleasure to join you at Mass this morning."

"The pleasure was all mine," said Father Marcus, his voice carefully neutral.  "Old Miller will meet you at the docks to take you back to Ballinskelligs in time for your train."

"Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," said the Bishop, shaking Marcus' hand.

"Ad Majorem Dei Gloriam," Marcus repeated, hating himself for it.  They _mattered_ to him, those words of greeting that marked one Jesuit to another, shared by members of the order all over the world.  He hated himself for simply repeating them back, as he was supposed to, as the bishop expected.  He hated himself for continuing to pretend that this man was his brother.  _"For the Greater Glory of God."_ Lies.  All of it.  Nothing but lies. 

But Marcus said none of this.  He simply waved goodbye as the bishop walked away and closed the door behind him.

 

**NATIVITY  
**

Octavia’s baby was already driving her to the brink of madness, and he had not even been born yet.

“I know it’s a boy,” she said to Abigail, pacing back and forth in her bedchamber. “Nothing in the world is more capable of infuriating a woman than a man who wants his own way.”

“You’d be surprised,” said Abigail, smiling. “Girls are no easier. Boy, girl, it doesn’t matter. All children exhaust you and drain the life out of your body, over and over, every day. We only manage to bear it because what they give back to us is so much greater than the things they took away.”

“Was it like that for you?” asked Octavia. “With your little girl?”

Abigail looked away, busying herself with the boxes of tools and cloths and small glass bottles she had brought with her to Blake Farm. The baby was coming, and Abigail was not going home until he did. She fidgeted with her medical kit for a moment and did not answer right away. Octavia looked at her with a kind of frank, compassionate wisdom in her young eyes, and Abigail decided it was time to tell someone the truth.

“It was,” she said. “Until it wasn’t.”

“What happened?”

“Her father was killed,” said Abigail, “and it changed everything. She blamed me. She was only fourteen then, there was so much she didn’t understand. So much I couldn’t tell her. Children don’t always understand when you’re protecting them. They see the results of the choices that you make, but they cannot step back and see _why_.” Octavia paused in her pacing and bent over, another contraction coming, and Abigail was by her side in an instant, clutching her arm. They walked back and forth for awhile, together, Octavia’s breathing coming heavy and deep.

“Where is your daughter now?” Octavia asked.

“School,” said Abigail. “In America. She asked me to send her away. She wanted to be as far from home - from me – as she possibly could.”

“I’m sorry,” said Octavia. “How painful that must have been.” She regarded Abigail thoughtfully. “I can see it all over your face,” she said. “How much you love her.”

Abigail swallowed the rising swell of tears that began to tighten her chest, and nodded.

“She is the thing I love most in the world,” she said softly. “She brought me more sorrow and more joy than I ever knew I was capable of. This is what it means, Octavia. This is the thing that is about to happen to you. You must be ready.” Octavia nodded, bravely.

“I’m ready,” she said.

Bellamy and Octavia Blake had run Blake Farm together since their parents’ death six years ago, the last time influenza hit the island of St. Brigid. Two years ago, Octavia had fallen in love with a man named Lincoln from County Clare, who had married her and stayed on St. Brigid to help the Blakes with the farm. Abigail had not made many friends on the island – if she was being honest with herself, she suspected she had not really made any – but Blake Farm was one of the few places she felt, if not welcomed, at least accepted. Lincoln was a big, quiet man who spoke little, but what he did speak was unfailingly sensible. Bellamy had his sister’s quick temper and warm heart, and they were devoted to each other, which made him a trying presence in the sick room when Octavia took one of her bad turns. He was not entirely sure he trusted Abigail with his sister’s life yet, but she had learned to be patient with him, and not to mind the tension. It was no small thing, after all, for a child to be born into a family with three such parents to love and care for it, and Abigail thought in the long run an overprotective brother was infinitely superior to a distant one.

Still, when Octavia insisted, in a tone that brooked no argument, that her brother and husband would be sleeping in the barn tonight because she was sick to death of their footsteps pounding up the stairs every time she so much as whimpered, Abigail felt nothing but relief.

* * *

It was a long night.

Bellamy and Lincoln finally departed, urging Abigail to call them if they were needed (“You won’t be,” said Octavia firmly, “now _go_ ”), around nine or ten. For several hours, things were calm. Octavia walked back and forth until the pains grew too much for her, then took to her bed. Abigail held her hand, urged her to breathe, and stroked her hair. Things were slow at the beginning. When the knock came at the farmhouse door, Abigail assumed it was Octavia’s husband or brother returning to check on her because things were too quiet.

But it wasn’t.

It was Father Kane.

“Lincoln sent for me,” he said. “He told me Octavia is in labor.”

“She is,” said Abigail.

They stood there in the doorway, not sure how to proceed.

“Are they here?” he asked.

“Who?”

“Bellamy and Lincoln.”

“No,” she said. “They were in the way. Octavia sent them down to the barn for the night. They were starting to panic every time she made a sound. By the twelfth time, I was close to pushing them both out the window.”

He smiled at that, tentatively, and she smiled back.

“It’s good to see you,” Abigail said, and what a world of meaning there was in those five simple words. There was honest truth, there was an acknowledgment of how hard he had been working to avoid her, to push her away, and there was a question inside it too, in the way her eyebrow arched just the slightest bit as she looked at him, and he knew she saw more than she let on.

He started to say more, but a loud cry from the other room startled them both and Abigail hastened back to Octavia. Marcus, unsure how to proceed, closed the door behind him and sat down by the fire, Bible in hand, to wait.

Back in the bedchamber, things had begun to progress rapidly, but not quite as smoothly as Abigail had hoped. The baby had turned inside Octavia’s belly, and after an hour of massaging and coaxing and prodding, Abigail had given up. The baby stayed put.

“Definitely a boy,” said Octavia.

“Definitely a _Blake_ ,” said Abigail dryly, and Octavia laughed at that through her heavy labored breathing.

“What happens now?” asked Octavia, and Abigail could see that underneath the fiery defiance in her eyes she was frightened.

“I have to reach inside and turn him,” she said, “before you can push him out.”

“All right,” said Octavia. “Just tell me what to do.”

“Lie back,” said Abigail, “and keep breathing. I don’t have ether. This will hurt.”

“I’m ready,” said Octavia.

“Father Kane!” Abigail called over her shoulder into the other room. “We need you.”

He raced into the room, Bible in hand, expecting to find Octavia on the brink of death, but instead saw a pained but calm young woman breathing regularly and a steady, focused Abigail Griffin kneeling at the foot of her bed, where a white sheet draped over Octavia’s knees. “Hold her hand,” said Abigail to Marcus, and he looked at her in surprise.

“What?”

“Hold her hand,” she repeated. “Bring your chair in and come sit here and hold her hand.”

“You want me in here with you?” he said, startled. “In the room?”

“Were you just going to sit out there in the kitchen, by the fire, and wait?” she asked, puzzled. “Is that what you do?”

“They send for me when a woman on the island goes into labor,” he said a little stiffly. “In case I’m needed. I sit up with the family, if I need to, but –“

“It’s in case I die,” said Octavia, through gritted teeth. “That’s why Bellamy called him. That’s why he comes. He comes to give Last Rites, if something happens to me or the baby.”

“No one is getting Last Rites today,” said Abigail firmly, addressing both of them, “so we might as well put him to good use. You came here to give comfort?” she said sharply to Marcus. “Then do it. Don’t sit in the corner with your Bible. Pull your chair over here and hold her hand. That’s what she needs from you.” Her dark eyes were flashing with some strong emotion. “Be here,” she said. “Don’t be a symbol. Be a person.”

He looked at her, at the blood on her hands and the streak of blood across her cheek where she had tried to smooth away a loose strand of hair from her braid. He looked at the fire in her eyes, at the taut strength of her powerful forearms, and he somehow knew, without knowing how he knew, that she was right. That nothing would happen to Octavia or the baby on Abigail Griffin’s watch.

And so he went back into the kitchen, picked up the wooden chair he had been sitting in, carried it into the bedroom, and sat himself by Octavia’s side. She took his hand in hers, and he placed his other hand on top of it.

“All right,” he said. “Tell me what to do.”

“She needs to keep breathing,” said Abigail. “The pain will hit her in waves, and she’ll forget. It’s the breathing that opens the body up so it can do what it needs to do. It will help her control the pain, and to push when she needs to. You hold your hand, and keep her breathing. That’s your job.”

He nodded, and watched in awestruck fascination as Abigail took a deep breath and slid her hand between Octavia’s parted thighs. He could not see, over Octavia’s raised knees and the white sheet, what was happening, but he knew it was not good. Octavia’s entire body convulsed in pain, and she cried out, clamping onto his hand with violent ferocity.

“Keep her breathing,” snapped Abigail, “I need to turn the baby. This will hurt.”

“Octavia,” said Marcus, and his voice was soothing. He stroked her sweaty hair and squeezed her hand. “Breathe. Don’t forget to breathe.”

“It hurts,” she whispered, through gasps of pain, then let out another sharp cry that seemed connected to a forceful movement of Abigail’s arms inside her.

“You are a warrior,” he whispered to her, as she gripped his hand and desperately tried to breathe. “You are so brave. Look at this thing you’re doing, to bring this child into the world. Look how extraordinary you are. Your baby has a warrior mother. What a gift that is.”

“You’re doing very well, Octavia,” said Abigail. “We’re close. The baby is turning.” She moved her hands again, her shoulder leaning in, as though she were reaching, and Octavia screamed like a hot iron knife had entered her belly.

“Father,” she said, her breath coming in ragged bursts, “if I die –“

“No one is dying today,” he said, his voice firm, and his eyes met Abigail’s then, over Octavia’s white-covered knees, and he saw in the flickering firelight that she was looking at him with approval – something that might even be called warmth. “You are a warrior,” he said again to Octavia. “You are a hero. You are indestructible, Octavia Blake Lincoln, and next week when you bring this baby to church to be baptized, you and I wll remember this night as the moment you learned that you are too strong for anything to break you. When we fall down, we get back up. When pain comes over us, we fight through it. That’s what it means to be alive.” She was looking up at him, tears of pain in her eyes, but she was breathing, slow and steady, she had stopped crying out, she was breathing and pushing and Abigail was reaching and Marcus felt himself carried along by a force he could not understand, as though he were floating down a dark river on a raft and Octavia’s breath was at the sail and all three of them were journeying somewhere strange and new together, and he felt his own breath deepen to match Octavia’s, to encourage her, to press her on, and she was just a girl, lying there on the bed, she was so small, her body was so small, and this thing happening to it was so enormous, it was the most extraordinary miracle that had ever taken place and it was also the simplest most everyday thing, both of those were true at the same time, and he felt a pang of grief in his heart for all the babies that had been born on the island of St. Brigid while he sat downstairs by the fire on a hard wooden chair, clutching onto his black Bible and missing the miracles.

And then he heard the sound, the most beautiful sound in the world, the harsh, angry cry of a baby drawing air into its lungs for the first time, and as Octavia collapsed against her pillow, spent and shaken, Marcus saw Abigail lift a wet red thing from beneath the white sheet over Octavia’s knees, and she was laughing, and she was crying, and suddenly he was laughing and crying too.

“It’s a girl,” said Abigail, and Octavia’s face lit up with delight. “I told you daughters were trouble.”

* * *

Marcus was given the happy job of running down the gravel path to the barn to fetch Bellamy and Lincoln to let them know that Octavia was perfectly well and that baby Indra was hearty and healthy and ready to meet the rest of her family. He saw them from the doorway, these two big, powerful men, all muscle and sinew, farm laborers who spent their days in backbreaking work, and he watched as the tiny red-faced creature wrapped in a yellow plaid blanket melted them both with the extraordinary force of their love. Oh, if anything was a miracle, it was this. This family, in this room. He felt alive. He wanted to run down to the shore and dive into the cold night ocean. He wanted to cry out, or dance, or kiss someone. _This was a miracle,_ he wanted to shout. _I have witnessed a miracle._ He had spent four years saying Mass, reciting Scripture, baptizing children and burying the dead, yet he knew in the depths of his heart that here, tonight, in this room, holding Octavia’s hand as the child inside her made its way to the light, that this was the first moment he had really been a priest.

“They’re quite a family,” said Abigail, coming up behind him, and her voice startled him out of his reverie. “What a lucky child.”

“I would trade places with that baby in a heartbeat,” agreed Marcus. “She’s going to have Uncle Bellamy wrapped around her little finger. It’s going to be a sight to see.” Abigail laughed. “Are you leaving?” he asked her, noticing that she held her traveling medical case in her hand, and she nodded.

“I’ll be back to check on her in the morning,” she said, “but for right now they don’t need me. And it’s been a long night.”

“I’ll walk you home,” he said, surprising them both, and she tilted her head in that appraising way of hers, looked at him for a long moment, then nodded her acceptance.

The night was cold and clear as they stepped outside, walking down the path from Blake Farm to the sea road. Abigail looked up at the glittering night sky and laughed.

“’And the star they had seen at its rising went ahead of them,’” she said softly, “’until it came to rest over the place where the child was.’”

“’O holy night, O night divine,’” said Marcus, agreeing with her. The December moonlight shone on the water. All was cold and still. They walked in amicable silence for a long time before Abigail spoke again.

“When you saw me at the door, I thought you were going to turn around and leave,” she said.

“I considered it.”

“I’m very glad you didn’t,” she said. “You were a tremendous help.”

“I did nothing,” he protested. “I was the most useless person in the room.”

She gave a half-smile, acknowledging the justice of this, and he smiled back. “That may be true,” she said. “But you gave her what she needed. She didn’t need Last Rites from you, she didn’t need your words. She needed to feel the presence of God. She needed comfort.”

“I’m the one,” he said quietly, “who felt the presence of God.” And he looked at her then, alone in the middle of the cold dark road, at the way the wind tugged at her braid and her cloak, at the dried streak of blood she hadn’t washed off her cheek, at the light in her eyes, and he remembered the thing he had forgotten from the moment she opened the door of Blake Farm.

He remembered the bullet.

He remembered Jacob Griffin.

He felt ill again, and set off walking back down the sea road, with greater haste than before. She watched him curiously, but didn’t say anything, just scampered at his side with quick steps to keep up. When they reached her gate, he nodded politely and turned to go before her voice stopped him.

“Will you ever tell me?” she said, and it was not an accusation, just a simple question, but it froze him in his tracks. He turned to her slowly, and saw her watching him with attentive curiosity. “The thing that makes you do that,” she explained. “One minute it feels as though we might be friends and the next you cannot get away from me fast enough.”

“We are friends,” he said. “I like you very much.”

“I like you too,” she said, “but there’s more to friendship than that. You have to be able to talk to me, you know. I can’t just wait for the next person in the village to have a baby in order for us to have a conversation.”

He looked at her. She looked at him.

“There are things in my past,” he began, not sure how to proceed, but that appeared to be all she needed. She nodded, as though she understood.

“I see,” she said. “A past. I have one of those too. So does everyone on this island.  Well, maybe not baby Indra, but certainly the rest of us. What is so very poisonous about yours? What is the thing you’re afraid I’ll despise you if I ever find out?”

She had put her finger on it so accurately that it startled him, and he wasn’t sure how to respond.

“There is nothing you’ve done that could possibly be worse than the things that I’ve done,” she said. “I think we could be friends with each other. I would like that.”

Something in her eyes pulled him closer without him even knowing it, until he found himself suddenly very near to her, separated only by the low wooden gate. He could see the reflection of the night sky in her dark eyes, and something inside him snapped, and he knew if he did not leave right now he would kiss her, and it would all be over.

So he nodded a hasty goodbye, turned his back, and walked up the road.

 

**EPIPHANY  
**

He did not know where she went for Christmas.  She left the island on Old Miller's boat and was gone for several days.  He did not see her until after the New Year, during his regular Saturday afternoon Confessions.  Mrs. Monroe had been last in line, he thought, and he waited a few more minutes to see if anyone else was coming.  He was just standing to gather his things and go back to the rectory when the door to the confessional opened.

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” he heard a low voice say, and his heart sped up suddenly. The church was empty. She was the last in line. And they were alone, in the dark, in a tiny wooden box. His side of the confessional was separated from hers only by a thin, sliding, floor-to-ceiling panel of intricately carved wooden grating. But no, that wasn’t true, there was so much more between them than that. There was the sacred ritual of this space, there was the white Roman collar around his throat, there was the bullet he had fired into her husband’s chest. There was Jacob Griffin’s red blood on the gray cobbled ground of an execution yard.

There was so much more separating them than that panel of wooden lattice.

When he heard her rise from the _prie-dieu_ where she knelt and slide the panel aside, removing the barrier between them, he felt as naked and exposed before her as if she had walked in on him in the bath.

“That’s better,” she said, smiling. “It seems silly, in towns as small as this to have divided confessionals. As though we wouldn’t know each other’s voices.”

“I would know your voice anywhere,” he said softly, and he couldn’t help himself, he couldn’t keep the gravity out of his voice, he could see it startled her but he couldn’t pull the words back in. So instead he busied himself with adjusting his scapular while she settled herself back down on her knees.

Only now that the lattice panel was gone, he was seated, and she was kneeling, and there was nothing but the small wooden _prie-dieu_ between them, and their bodies were so close that he could smell her sharp rosemary scent.

“It has been two years since my last confession,” she said, her words pulling him back to himself, and he forced himself not to think about the intimacy of it, her hushed whisper inside this small dark space where she knelt so close that she could very nearly lay her head on his lap. “I’m afraid I’ve forgotten the words.”

“Don’t worry about the words,” he said. “Just talk to me. Just tell me what’s on your mind.”

“I was married for fourteen years before my husband died,” she said. “I was a virgin when I married him. I was just a girl. He was the only man I ever . . . knew, in that way.” Marcus swallowed hard, desperately fighting to keep his expression impassive. He nodded, distantly, paternally, encouraging her to continue, while his heart pounded like a martial drum inside his chest and heat began to swirl low and deep inside him. “I have been a widow for four years,” she said, “and a respectable woman. I am a good daughter of the Church, and before, during and after my marriage, I was never once tempted to stray.” She looked down, turned her head away as though she could not look at him. “Until I came to this place.”

She reached a nervous hand up to tuck her hair behind her ears. He could not look at her. She could not look at him. But she had gone too far to stop now. She had to say it. She knew she had to say it.

“I have been having . . . impure thoughts,” she said, quietly. “I know that nothing can happen – I know that this man does not want me in that way – but still, I . . .” She stopped. “I have dreams,” she said. “Such dreams I never knew a person could have. So real that I wake in the night, shaking and sweating. And when I see this man – this good man,” she said, staring fixedly at the floor, “this holy man, so pure and kind and honest, I wish only to look on him as a brother, a friend. Yet when I see him – at the market, or walking by the sea, or at a birthing woman's bedside, or even in the house of God – I can think of nothing but the things that we do together when he comes to me in my dreams.” She looked at him then, suddenly, and it was like a knife piercing his chest, the diamond glitter of tears in her eyes, the sadness and longing woven tightly together. “I don’t want to hurt anyone,” she said, her voice shaking. “But I don’t know how to make it stop.”

“How do you know?” said Marcus, his voice coming out in a rough sandpaper whisper. “How can you be so sure this man does not want you in that way?”

“He doesn’t,” she said, unable to tear her eyes from him. “He can’t.”

“He shouldn’t,” Marcus said softly. “But he does. God help him, Abigail, he does.” And in one swift movement he sank from the chair to his knees, facing Abigail, nothing but the small wooden prayer bench between them, and he kissed her.

She melted into his arms the moment they touched, and he into her. Mutual surrender. Her mouth parted under his instantly, filling his with her warm breath. She tasted like lavender. She was so soft. She was so hungry and urgent. Years of dormant desire stirred throughout his body, like a forest full of wild beasts all rousing themselves from slumber at once, and he could not be gentle with her anymore. The wooden prayer bench was toppled over, cast aside, and then Abigail was on her back on the floor of the confessional, Marcus pinning her down. She clutched wildly at his back, pulling him closer to her, wanting more, and he cursed the heaps of fabric, the thick wool of her dress and cloak, the endless layering of his robes, that kept their bodies from meeting as they now both knew they must. A dim, distant part of his brain still able to think coherently shouted insistent reminders that he could not do this, he could not make love to a woman on the floor of the confessional, he was a priest, he was celibate, she was a member of his flock, there were not enough words in the English language to describe all the different ways that this was wrong.

But the little voice in his mind urging caution was drowned out altogether just then, when his mouth drifted from her rosy panting lips to press hot kisses against her throat, and she let out a soft moan that entirely unstitched him. _This is the sound she will make when you enter her,_ said another, wickeder voice. _Do you want her here, inside this small space, where you both must keep quiet? Or do you want her in her own bed, a quarter mile walk to the nearest neighbor’s house, where you can take her breasts in your mouth and listen to her cry out with pleasure?_

“Abigail,” he said, pulling away just enough to look into her eyes. “We can’t do this here.”

She stiffened beneath him, flushed bright pink, and looked away, and he could see that she had been afraid of this – afraid to offer herself and be rejected. He pressed his mouth against her neck again, feeling her back arch beneath him, and could not resist sliding a hand across her woolen bodice to palm one soft breast.

“I didn’t mean that I don’t want this,” he breathed into her ear. “I want this. I want you. But I want to do it properly. Not on the floor. Not in church. Not rushed and shameful.” He kissed her neck over and over. “I want to come to your bed like a proper lover, Abigail,” he said. “I want to spend the night in your arms. Please don’t say no.”

“Come at midnight,” she said. “By the sea road. I’ll be waiting.”


	4. The Small Free Birds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Marcus visits Abigail at midnight.

** **

The half-mile walk from the rectory to the cottage had never felt longer. It was beautiful in the moonlight, the sea gleaming silver ahead of him and the fields stretching away darkly behind him like shadows, but he saw none of it. He could think of nothing that was not Abigail. He had room for not a single thought in his head besides the taste of her, the smell of her, imagining the feel of her naked body. He was made of Abigail. He was consumed by her. There was nothing else left in the world.

When he rounded the corner from the path to approach her front door, he saw that she was waiting for him. She stood silhouetted in her doorway, dark hair loose around her shoulders, clad only in a thin white shift that the moonlight slipped right through; he could see the shape of her inside it. He approached like a penitent, head bowed respectfully. He was on her holy ground now. He was at her door. He would not go where he was not wanted. And so he stopped at her threshold and looked down at her, at this small strong woman with her clouds of soft dark hair and her powerful hands, and he waited to see what she would do next.

“Have you come here of your own free will and choice, and without compulsion?” she said archly, and it startled a laugh out of him, hearing her quote from the Rite of Matrimony in this most incongruous of circumstances.

“I have,” he said, and she smiled at him.

“Good,” she said. “Take me to bed, Father Kane.”

He seized her mouth for a hungry kiss, grasping her with such force that he lifted her entire body off the ground, sweeping her inside and kicking the door closed behind him.

“I think you’d better call me Marcus,” he murmured through kisses, and she laughed.

“If I were a very wicked woman,” she said, taking him by the hand and leading her through the small kitchen and sitting room to the small bedchamber beyond it, “I would say no to that.” She pulled him into the bedroom and closed the door, then led him over to the bed, tugging his wool sweater over his head as she went. “I would call you Father Kane when you were inside me,” she whispered, pressing kisses into his bare chest. “I would cry out ‘Father Kane’ when you made me come.” He swallowed hard, feeling the swelling between his thighs become unbearable. “But I am not a wicked woman,” she said softly. “I am a very, very good woman who wants you very, very badly."

“Abigail,” he said roughly, and it was all he could manage through a voice raspy with desire, but she heard everything she needed to hear in it. She slipped the soft white shift off her shoulders and let it slither down her body to the floor, then stood naked before him, bathed in moonlight. She was perfect. She was right here. She wanted him.

“Marcus,” she said. “I’m ready.”

* * *

Abigail had told the truth when she said to Marcus in the confessional that she had never been with a man besides her husband. In the four years since she had lost him – in the years of endless, crushing sorrow that followed the Rising – there had been no one in Abigail’s bed but herself. She was competent enough in that department to keep the knife-sharp pangs of longing sanded down to a dull ache, but it was unsatisfactory and hollow without the heat of another body, nothing more than a way to help her sleep. After all, there was only so much you could do with your own hands. You knew where you were going next, for instance. You could not _surprise_ yourself.

And so the giddy delight of Marcus Kane’s body on hers, his breath on her skin, his mouth between her thighs, awoke something warm and wild inside her that had atrophied with lack of use. She had forgotten what it felt like to have a man in her bed. She had forgotten how joyous sex could be, how surprising. She had forgotten how happy she used to be. And here he was, this big warm animal, all hungry mouth and frantic hands and dark soft pelt of hair, touching places that had gone untouched for so long that she had forgotten they were capable of sensation.

He began, first, on the inside of her thighs, pressing hot kisses into the skin and running his tongue up and down – slowly at first, then more urgently. He stayed there for a while. He took his time. He kissed and licked every square inch of her thighs, of her lower belly, of the her hips and waist, circling closer and closer to the molten core of her but taking his time, not rushing. It was through this – through his slow, patient, persistent attention to her pleasure – that she fully understood just how deep his feelings for her went. She had known, from that afternoon in the church – maybe, if she was honest, even earlier – that he wanted her. But the tenderness and generosity took her breath away. Though his body cried out for hers so badly that she could feel the waves of heat rising off him, he was entirely willing to forgo his own satisfaction to tend to hers. It made her feel exultant, powerful. He was not just making love to her, he was paying homage.

And then all conscious thought left her mind, because his tongue had come home to the place it wanted to be, and the rough pressure of it, flicking and suckling at her as his fingers slowly stroked the surrounding folds, shattered her with ecstasy. This had always been how she liked it best, and Marcus seemed to know exactly what she wanted without her speaking a word. He knew to slip his tongue with gentle pressure over the desperately sensitive bud at the center of her until her body began to heave upwards, desperate to capture more, and then he would devour her with a wolflike ferocity. She was not at all sure she would be able to come without screaming. She felt the waves of climax rise within her, felt them carry her along, and she bit her lip, squeezed her eyes shut, gripped his dark hair as his head sank lower and lower into her, and then finally erupted. They lay still together for a moment, her all panting wetness, him all eager passion, before she pulled him up to her. He kissed her, his mouth warm and damp and smelling of her, and she was so overcome with affection for him that she thought she might burst. Wordlessly, she rolled him over onto his back and felt for the hard swelling between his thighs. He inhaled sharply, as if in pain, when her hand brushed the sensitive tip.

“Do you like that?” she whispered, lips close to his ear, hot breath against his skin. “Do you like it when I touch you there?” He could not speak, could only nod. “Close your eyes,” she said, and one hand stroked his hair tenderly, soothingly, as the other caressed him. She wanted to watch him. She wanted to study every inch of him, to memorize his expression while she made him come.

“You do things to me, Marcus,” she whispered. “I didn’t know I could feel this anymore. I don’t want it to stop. I don’t ever want it to stop.” She gripped him tighter in her small powerful hand, and he felt an ocean of want rise up inside him. Even though she was still damp and sweaty from her own climax, just a few minutes before, the way he rose and fell against her, the way his whole body contracted with short gasping breaths as she moved her hand up and down, roused her again.

“Touch me,” she said, rolling over on top of his restless body, and he did, sliding a hand between her still-wet thighs.

“I’ve never felt like this before,” he whispered, in between pressing hard kisses into the side of her throat. “I’ve never wanted a woman in my life the way I want you. You make me feel –“

“Intoxicated,” she said, her voice coming out in gasps as his fingers slipped inside of her. “That’s how I feel too. I’ve never –“

She stopped, unable to finish. He stroked her for a few seconds longer, until she was soaked and trembling, and then he buried his mouth in her throat, and in one fluid motion he flipped her over onto the mattress, sank down on top of her body and thrust himself into her.

It was glorious. She arched her back and cried out, over and over again. He was so heavy and thick inside her, filling her completely. She was warm and wet and yearning and she pulled him in, deeper, deeper, down into her furthest depths, and Father Marcus Kane would have happily remained celibate another ten years for the sake of this at the end of it. There would be time, later, to think about the vow of chastity he was breaking, about the lie he was telling to Abigail Griffin with his body and his words – the lie wrapped around the bullet he had fired into Jacob Griffin’s chest. All those things were still there. But they were distant, far away, nearly forgotten. There was room for nothing else but the way it felt as Abigail rose to meet him, wrapping him between her thighs as he thrust into her, over and over. How glad he was that nobody else was nearby to repress them into silence; her soft moaning cries as he dove into her, the way she gasped his name, made his entire body flush with heat.

“Are you close?” he whispered into her ear, and she could only nod, could not form coherent words. He was nearly there, he was circling the brink, he could feel the gravity rising inside him, and then she looked at him, straight into his eyes, and “I’ve never –“ she began to say again, but the words were lost because the sound of her voice did it, her soft throaty earnest voice, it pushed him over the edge and the waves crashed down on them both. He thrust into her, deeply, fiercely, and she gave an exuberant cry, wrapping her arms around his neck, as he shuddered and burst inside her, calling out her name.

“I’ve never –“ she repeated a third time, as her body trembled and collapsed against his, and he realized what she was trying to say and why she could not bring herself to say it.

“It’s so different with you,” she breathed as he gently pulled out of her, trailing kisses along her collarbone and breasts. “I’ve never – even with my husband – I don’t know how to explain it, but you – you do something to me. I don’t know what it is. But everything feels different.”

Her big, dark eyes looked up at him then, and he felt her soft warm body beneath him, and he could not look at her. He buried his face, his mouth, in her shoulder and held her close. Now that his body had been sated, now that his desperate desire for her had been quenched, the empty hollow place inside him it had left behind was suddenly filled with darkness – with the faces of all the people he had betrayed in order to arrive at this moment as he dissolved into sweaty softness on top of Abigail Griffin’s naked body.

She kissed the top of his head, sweetly, with boundless affection, and slipped into a gentle, easy sleep. He held her tight, breathed her in, and closed his eyes, praying that the knot of panic and guilt inside him would dissipate – praying that sleep and peace would come.

* * *

When the light of early morning slipped in through the white lace curtains of Abigail Griffin’s bedroom, and she stirred into wakefulness, she felt the heat of Marcus Kane’s body beside her, and the events of the night before came rushing back. She was amused to find herself so powerfully aroused merely by the memory of it. Of the way he looked at her, his dark eyes heavy with desire, when she had stood naked before him. There had been no one since Jacob. It had been far too painful even to consider. But that Marcus _saw_ her – looked at her and saw her real self, saw all the way down to her bones, and wanted her for exactly who she was - that, she was powerless to resist.

He stirred a little in his sleep, and she rolled over to look at him. His dark hair was disheveled and untidy. With his eyes closed, she noticed for the first time how perfect his eyelashes were. She studied his sleeping face – the angular jaw, the aristocratic nose, the whisper of gray at his temple. Now that it had been unleashed, the depth of her desire for him was astonishing to her. She did not know how it was possible for a force that powerful to be coiled up inside her all this time without her knowledge. Yet there it was.

There were things to consider, of course. There was a great deal to say. He was still the priest – still celibate. There was the sin question, and the everyone-in-the-village-finding-out question, and the what-would-her-daughter-say question. But none of those things felt nearly as important, right now, as her desire to press her mouth over and over against the dark hair on his chest until he woke up to kiss her properly.

As Abigail's mouth roused him awake, and Marcus slid from fitful sleep into consciousness, memories of the night before flooded back to him too. But it was different for him. He lay there in Abigail’s bed, watching her kiss her way down his chest, watching the merry morning sunlight turn her hair copper and bronze and gold, and he felt a cold, sharp twist inside his gut, slicing him into two different people. One Marcus seized Abigail’s face in his hands and pulled her up to meet him, kissing her with reckless abandon until she pulled away, breathless and laughing. But a second Marcus, watching from the corner of the room, stared at the two entwined sunlit bodies without seeing them; he was too busy watching the trickle of red blood between gray cobblestones and hearing a voice in the distance bark the words, _“For God’s sake, man, someone get word to his wife.”_


	5. The Last Star Falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Father Kane visits the Eden Tree, Abigail is caught singing to herself and Bishop Thelonious writes a letter.

**MORNING**

Tending the old graves in the churchyard was, oddly, Marcus Kane’s favorite place to go and think. And he found himself suddenly very much in need of a green quiet place where he could be alone with his thoughts. From the moment he woke up that morning and felt Abigail’s warm skin pressed against his in the sunlight, there was no question in his mind about whether he would return that night. And the night after. And the night after. He knew now that he was powerless to stop. The question was what to do about it, and what that meant.

He knew what he ought to do.

He ought to write to the bishop.  He ought to tell the bishop everything.

But the bishop would tell him to stop. The bishop would tell him that the bodies of women were the vessel of all evil in the world (impossible to believe, after what he had seen last week at Octavia Blake’s bedside) and that to make this sin right, he would have to cast her off. And since he knew he could not do that – since he knew from the very first moment he kissed her in the confessional that kissing her was the most right thing he had ever done in his life – he was not entirely sure what help the bishop could be.

That breaking his vow of celibacy was _not_ the problem he was most afraid of told Marcus everything he needed to know about just how far gone he was. The thing in his way was not Bishop Thelonious.

It was the bullet that killed Jacob Griffin.

When you stripped away all of the reasons and excuses, when you stripped away the choices that shaped Marcus Kane’s life and the forces pushing and pulling at him, when you looked only at the simplest possible accounting of the facts, you were left with this:

He had killed a man and then bedded his wife.

And Abigail did not know.

He stopped, as he always did, underneath the sprawling elm he had come to think of, rather fancifully, as the Eden Tree, for its resemblance to the illustration of Adam and Eve on the frontispiece of the Bible he kept on his writing desk. The Eden Tree was his place for thinking. There was a small white stone bench beneath its shade, and he sat there for a moment, looking towards the sea road as it snaked down the hillside toward the white cottage where Abigail Griffin was going about her day, and he knew that all he had to do, to solve every problem in front of him, was walk down that road and tell her the truth. It would end the lie, and it would break her heart, and he would go back to being the cold lonely priest in the church at the top of the hill, so she could go back to hating him. He knew he could not make love to her again a second time with the ever-growing guilt of this lie swelling within him, but he also knew that there was nothing he could do, nothing at all, to stop himself from leaving the rectory at midnight tonight and walking down the sea road, lured onward by the promise of her naked body. It was too late. He was already lost.

He was very much afraid this was what falling in love felt like. He wished he knew that for certain, but of course, there was no one who could tell him.

No one, of course, except the one person he could not ask.

But no, he thought.  That was foolish.  He did not need to ask.

He knew.

He had known from the first moment he saw her, when he was lying in a heap of mud and mortification on the sea road and turned to see him standing over him, with her dark hair and green dress and that sparkling laugh in her eyes.  It had been over, entirely over for him, right then.  He had held out as long as he could, he had fought it, he had gone to war against himself to push away those feelings.  But he had only been able to resist as long as he could convince himself that the turmoil was within his own heart, that she remained untouched. 

And now that defense was gone. There was no coming back from that moment in the confessional.  He could not resist anything after that.

The question now was what to do. 

There were too many lies between them already for him to desire the addition of more.  He could not entrap her in a web of secrecy by making her some kind of secret mistress.  He could not treat last night as though it were a wicked secret that must be concealed from the rest of the town.  No, if she wanted him the way he wanted her, then it must be open.  Honest.  Out in the light.

Which meant choosing between Abigail and the priesthood.

And there was no way to know which of those two paths to take until he knew what Abigail wanted.

He could do nothing until midnight.  He could decide nothing until he was back at the cottage, standing outside her door.

Very well, then.  He would wait.

 

**NOON**

The sun was high that day. It was a frigid December afternoon, cold and clear, but Abigail did not feel the chill. She was all sunlight, loose-limbed and relaxed and ten years younger than she had been not twenty-four hours ago when she entered that confessional. She had no patients that day, so she whiled away the hours of waiting for Marcus, thinking about Marcus, by cleaning the surgery to a spotless shine. It felt right to spend the day restoring things to their proper order. It felt right to polish the wooden work table until it gleamed, to shine the bottles over the mantel and sweep the dust from the floor. This was a day for making things new again, and she wanted the world around her to look as fresh and alive as she felt.

She worked all morning, after Marcus left her, and into the afternoon. Her hands were busy and her heart was light and her mind was so occupied by remembering the feel of his mouth when he kissed her goodbye that she was startled into almost dropping the roll of bandages in her hands when Young Miller knocked on the door behind her.

“You’ve a very pretty voice,” he said, smiling at her, and she stared at him for a minute, not sure what he meant. “Just now,” he said. “When you were singing.”

She couldn’t help laughing. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t even realize I was.”

“What was it, the song?” he asked curiously. “I’ve never heard it before.”

“It’s an old song about my hometown,” she said. “A town called Athenry, in County Galway. It’s the story of a man who was caught stealing bread from the British to feed his family, and was sent away on a prison ship to Australia, leaving his wife and child behind.”

“It sounds like a sad story,” he said.

“It is.”

“But you don’t look sad,” he said, his expression quizzical, and she laughed in spite of herself.

“I’m not,” she said. “It is a sad story but it’s also a song about my home. A place I loved.” She sang the refrain for him again, all shyness gone. She had a sweet low voice with a Galway lilt in it that reminded Young Miller of autumn leaves, for some reason he could not quite name.

> _“Low lie the fields of Athenry_
> 
> _Where once we watched the small free birds fly_
> 
> _Our love was on the wing_
> 
> _We had dreams and songs to sing_
> 
> _It’s so lonely ‘round the fields of Athenry.”_

“It does sound sad,” he said again.

“The story of the man and the woman is sad,” she agreed. “But the birds and the fields and the sky of County Galway – the open spaces and the green fields – I can never be sad, remembering that. I think that’s why I was singing it. I was thinking about the way it felt when a place becomes your home.”

“I’ve never been to Galway,” said the boy, a little wistfully. “I’ve never been anywhere but here.”

“This is a good place too,” said Abigail. “I think this would be a very easy home to love.”

“We’ll see,” he said skeptically. “I’ll ask you again in a year, after you’ve seen out the rainy season.”

“I think I’ll still love this place even then,” said Abigail, smiling at him. He smiled back, a little shyly, and tugged his cap at her, turning to go, then stopped.

“Oh,” he said. “I almost forgot. Your post.”

“Post?” she said, startled.

“Yes,” he said. “You have a letter.” He reached into his bag and fumbled around. Abigail’s heart began to race. Word from her daughter. After all this time. _Maybe things could be made right again. Maybe she did not hate her mother anymore. Maybe –_

“Here you are,” he said, holding out an envelope, and she collapsed a little, inwardly, seeing that it had a county postmark. Not from Clarke, then. Not this time.

“I didn’t open it,” said Young Miller, “I never do. Dad does sometimes, he’s nosy, and Mrs. Monroe gets at him when there’s gossip in the village. But I wouldn’t let him open this one. They’ll ask you about it, though, if they see you at the market. Dad told Mrs. Monroe and she’ll tell everyone and they’ll all want to know why you got a letter from the bishop.”

“From the _bishop_?” she exclaimed, and he nodded.

“That’s his seal, on the back, see?” She turned the envelope over and there it was. “He writes to Father Kane sometimes,” said the boy, “that’s how I know. I’ve seen it before. Do you know him, the bishop? Is that why he wrote to you?”

“I don’t know,” she said, turning the letter over and over in her hand, a puzzled look on her face.

_It was not possible._

_There was no way it could be possible._

Even if he had left the church right after he kissed her and written to Bishop Thelonious right away, and even if he had paid Old Miller extra to take it straight to the mainland, and even if it had landed on the first train to Killarney, there was no way a reply could have gotten back to her this quickly.

_Could it?_

But yet, if Bishop Thelonious was not writing to condemn her for seducing Father Kane away from his vow of chastity, what else could he possibly want with her _now,_ after all these years?

“Thank you,” she said absently to Young Miller, who watched her examine the envelope in silence for a few moments before he tipped his cap to her again and left.

A letter from Bishop Thelonious was unlikely to be good news, but she was more curious than apprehensive. After all, she thought to herself reasonably, the damage was long since done. There was nothing left he could possibly do to hurt her, she was sure of it.

She was very nearly sure of it.

 

**NIGHT**

 Marcus set out for the sea road as nervous as a bridegroom on his wedding day.

He felt his heart begin to thunder in his chest as he stepped out the rectory door and closed it behind him.  There was no one to wake at this hour - in winter, the village took to their beds close after sundown - but still, he walked softly, apprehensively.  He could just say he was going for a walk, he thought to himself, if anyone saw.  There was more on the sea road than just Abigail Griffin's cottage.  But he did not trust his face not to give him away. 

It was a short walk, less than half an hour, down the hill to the cottage.  He saw a light in her window, and he felt his blood begin to race.  She was there.  She was waiting for him.  All thought of sin left him and there was nothing but Abigail, and her soft white skin and smiling eyes, and his footsteps grew quicker and quicker until he was very nearly running.  He ran down the sea road, turned down the path to her door and pushed open the gate to see her standing in the doorway, in her white shift warm firelight setting her hair aglow from behind.

"How long have you known?" was all she said.

Marcus stopped in his tracks, a giddy lover's greeting dying on his lips.  Her face was hard, and cold, and he felt the cold clench of panic deep in his stomach.  He could not speak.  "It was months ago, wasn't it," she said, and it was not a question.  "It was that first Sunday, after Mass, when I mentioned Father Thelonious.  You knew right away, didn't you.  You knew who I was.  You knew who my husband was.  And for _six months,_ you said nothing."

He could not look at her.

"I wondered what it was," she said, "the thing that came over your face sometimes when you were with me, the dark thing that made you shrink back and pull away.  I saw it again this morning, when you woke up.  _In my bed_ ," and the sting in those words was awful.  "But I thought, after last night, I must be imagining it.  I thought it was something simpler.  I knew what I was getting into when I asked the parish priest to my bed, Marcus, I knew it would be messy.  But _this_."  She shook her head.  "No.  This I cannot forgive."  She looked him straight in the eye and there was something worse than fury in her voice, worse than rage.  It was emptiness.  He was looking at the dark black pit where Abigail Griffin used to be. 

"Abigail," he said, then stopped.

"What?" she said.  "What can you _possibly_ have to say to me?"

He reached out a hand for her, almost without thinking, and she recoiled, stepping back into the doorway. 

"Do not touch me," she said.  "Not now, not ever again.  Not with the hands that shot my husband."

"Abigail, please -"

“I _trusted_ you,” she said, a flicker of desperation rising into her dull, cold voice, and the sound of it shattered his heart. “I was even beginning to –“

"Don't say it," he interrupted her firmly.  "Don't.  It will only make it worse."  She nodded, and he watched her deflate, leaning against the doorframe, her face blank and sad.  He would so much rather she had struck him.

That was when he noticed the letter in her hand.

A letter postmarked from Killarney.

She saw him looking at it, and gave a short, bitter laugh.

“You might as well read it,” she said, holding the paper out to him. “Since it's about you."

"I don't need to read it," he said, an ache of grief and anger overtaking his body.  "If it's from Bishop Thelonious, I know what it says.  And I know why he said it."

"This is the best part," she said, "let me read you this bit."

"Abigail -"

"No, it's lovely, it really is, the part where he praises my _Christian charity_ and my _extraordinary capacity for forgiveness_ for befriending the man who killed my husband, he seems to think I'm a _saint,_ he speaks at great length about the Beatitudes and 'blessed are the poor in spirit,' it's very well-written, he has quite a way with words, and the only bit I don't _quite_ understand" - and there it was, the flashing cold fury he had known was coming - "is how it came to pass that Father Thelonious knew you killed my husband and _I didn't_." 

There was nothing to say to that. 

“You killed him,” she said, in a hollow voice. “You killed my husband. You killed sixteen men.  Men I knew, men who had eaten supper in my house.  Men whose children grew up with my daughter.  Men who left wives and families behind.  I am not the only widow among them.  Clarke is not the only fatherless child.  Sixteen men, Marcus Kane. And you knew, the whole time. You let me say those things – you didn’t stop me – you didn’t tell me – you came to my bed, and you put your hands and mouth all over me, and all the while, you knew. You were _inside_ me, and _you knew_.”

He could not look at her. She was like an avenging angel in the moonlight, all white silk and flashing eyes and loose dark hair. She was so beautiful. She was so angry. All he wanted to do was take her in his arms, bury kisses in her hair and whisper the words, “I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry” over and over and over again. But he could not touch her. He could never touch her again. Her wrath and grief were terrifying, and they were no less than exactly what he deserved. There was nothing to be done but bow his head and submit.

"Judas," she said with a hollow laugh.  "Betrayed with a kiss.  I always wondered how that felt."

"Abigail, don't."

"It's on a hill, Gethsemane," she said.  "Did you know that?  It slopes away down to a valley, and the high priest's house was on another hill.  Jesus would have seen them walk out the front door, Caiphas and the Roman centurions with their swords and armor.  He would have seen Judas coming.  He wasn't surprised by it, when they arrived.  He watched them coming.  He would have seen Judas lead those men down the hill and then up again.  Just sitting there in the garden, waiting and watching, knowing what was about to happen, watching that betrayal come closer and closer towards him.  I read that once, years ago.  I can't remember where.  I thought it was the saddest thing I had ever read about Jesus, sadder even than the torture somehow.  You expect such things of your enemies, after all, don't you?  He would have _expected_ suffering at the hands of the Romans.  But the human man inside him - not the all-seeing God, but the small-town carpenter who loved his mother - what must he have felt, watching Judas and the centurions walking up that hill?  I thought about that tonight, when I stood at my window and I watched you walk down the sea road.  I thought about all the places betrayals come from that we never, ever expect."

Her voice was sad and resigned, not even angry, but he felt every word enter his heart like a shard of broken glass.  It hurt worse than anything had ever hurt in his life.

“Whatever you think of me, Abigail,” he said in a choked voice, “it cannot possibly be worse than I what I think of myself."

"Oh, well then," she snapped, and he knew it had been the wrong thing to say, " _that's_ a consolation.  It's all right if my heart is broken, as long as yours is too."

"Abigail -" 

"God in heaven," she exclaimed, "how can they bear it?  All these good Catholic people. All these gentle souls with their stubborn island ways.  The Blakes and the Millers, Mrs. Monroe, Sinclair . . . they're the kindest people I've ever known.  And Irish to the bone.  There may not have been bloodshed here, but they would have joined the Rising if it had come to St. Brigid.  All of them.  You know they would.  So how can they sit there Sunday after Sunday, looking up at you there on the altar, and listen to you preach sermons about beating swords into plowshares, knowing that you shot sixteen Irishmen dead in the Dublin City Jail?"

“Because they don’t know!” he burst out, finally goaded into speech, and it silenced her. "They don't know, Abigail.  Of course they don't.  Of _course_ they don't.  How could I possibly have told them?  I took orders to become a new man, to leave the old Marcus Kane behind.  It was supposed to be over.  All of it was supposed to be over.  No one knows that Officer Kane of the British Army and Father Kane of St. Brigid Island are the same man, except for Bishop Thelonious. And now you."  His voice grew soft.  "No one was supposed to know," he said plaintively.  "I did not want to be that man anymore.  I wanted to forget.  I wanted to be someone new, someone better.  Someone who would never do those things again."

“You cannot run from this, Marcus,” she said, her voice a cold serpentine hiss. “You cannot run from the things you’ve done.”

"I realize that now," he said, with steel in his voice, pushing back at her for the first time.  "Neither of us can."  She looked up at him sharply, still angry but also, perhaps, the tiniest bit apprehensive.

“What do you mean?” she asked cautiously.

“There is no way you could possibly have known that Bishop Thelonious broke the seal of the confessional in passing along that piece of information,” he said evenly, “unless the person who told it to him was you."  She froze, stared at him, and he knew the blow had gone home.  “The British forces believed that Connolly and the Citizen Army were encamped at Liberty Hall,” he said. “They had no idea the rebel headquarters had moved until they shelled it to the ground and found nothing but rubble.  No one was there. So the question is, how did Father Thelonious know that Connolly had moved the garrison to the General Post Office and that all sixteen rebel leaders were inside?”

"Someone trusted him," said Abigail tightly, "who clearly ought not to have done so.  Someone made a mistake."

"Someone with access to information about the Citizen Army's movements that even the British generals did not have," he said.  "Someone on the inside.  Someone who could only have known the garrison left Liberty Hall because one of those sixteen men told her directly.  I did something terrible, Abigail, and I regret it every day, but your anger is for yourself as much as it is for me.  We both did terrible things.  If Thelonious had never found out the garrison had moved to the post office, they would have escaped. The Rising would still have been crushed, but Connolly and his men might have made it out of the building alive. But they were surrounded. They had no way out. And the rebel leaders knew that the bloodshed would not stop unless they surrendered themselves to the British. Jacob Griffin died by firing squad, and I was one of the men with a rifle in my hand. But he would never have set foot in that prison courtyard if it weren’t for you.” 

It was awful.  He could see every poisoned, corrosive word he spoke causing her to shrink further and further inside herself.  But he could not stop.  He did not know who this man was, speaking words through Marcus Kane's mouth, but he suddenly heard himself step over the line.

"That's why your daughter left, isn't it?  She knows it was you that told Thelonious where to find the rebels."

Everything became very quiet.  There was no sound but the rushing of the ocean at the bottom of the cliffs and the pounding of both their racing hearts.  She turned to him then, very slowly, and if the wild, grief-stricken fury burning in her eyes had been frightening before, it was nothing compared to the way she looked at him now.

“Do not,” she said, in a soft dangerous voice, “speak of my daughter ever, ever again.”

“I’m sorry,” he said, and meant it truly. There was something bottomless and dark in Abigail’s mother-sorrow, something in the very thought of Clarke (whose name she had never spoken to him until tonight) that caused an unimaginable pain, and using that against her felt cheap and cruel. “I’m sorry,” he said again, fruitlessly, knowing his words meant nothing to her. Knowing he could do nothing.

“It haunts me, Abigail,” he said simply, his hands open in a gesture of surrender. “Those men, their deaths, they _haunt_ me. For four years they followed me everywhere I went. I thought, coming here, I could outrun them. But there’s no outrunning them, Abigail, because they live inside me. The only moment’s peace I have known in the past four years has been with you. But it was a lie,” he said softly, as she turned back to look at him, “you were right to be angry, because I chose you freely when I knew exactly who you were, and never gave you the chance to do the same. You thought you knew me, but you never really did. Because I knew if I told you the truth, you would run. And I was a coward who didn’t want to lose you. Believe me, Abigail, you cannot possibly hate me more than I hate myself.”

She looked at him for a long moment before speaking. When she finally looked at him, straight in the eye, and parted her lips to speak, “Get out” was all she said.

The next day, she was gone.


	6. Dreams and Songs to Sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Bishop Finn Collins, a rerouted train, an ill-tempered baby and a question about fireplaces conspire to bring our heroes to the happy ending they - and we - deserve.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me to the end, darlings.

 

**SPRING  
**

"Right," said Father Jordan absently, paging through the stack of books on the table in front of him. “Has anyone explained to you how a Bishop’s Tribunal works?”

Marcus, sitting across from him, shook his head.  They were seated in a sunlit corner of a quiet pub in Killarney, where they had both taken rooms in the inn upstairs.  The remnants of beer and sandwiches littered the table around Father Jordan's massive heap of notes and research.

“It’s a little like a courtroom trial,” he said, without looking up from his books, “but it is also nothing at all like a courtroom trial. Canon law, my friend, is a complex, many-headed beast. A man could study it for decades and still not fully comprehend all its intricacies. I have been practicing for five years and I am still a novice. You have only been studying for a few months. There will be many things you do not understand.”

“I’m ready to learn,” said Father Kane. “I want to do this right.”

“The first thing to remember,” said Father Jordan, finally looking up at him, “is that the tribunal is made up of other bishops. And they are far, far more likely to err on the side of defending their brother than to take, and I mean no offense, the unsubstantiated word of a rogue island Jesuit who has only worn the collar for four years.”

Jasper Jordan’s frankness was refreshing, and Marcus found himself, despite the younger man’s dire assessment of their odds, warming to him immediately. He might fail, but he at least had an ally he thought he could trust. Father Jordan was young, but he was one of the best canon lawyers in Western Ireland, and he was from County Galway, which meant he was free of Bishop Thelonious’ poisonous influence. He was bright, creative, knowledgeable, and impartial. And he had taken the case because he believed it had a chance.

“A tribunal is made up of three bishops,” Father Jordan went on. “In this jurisdiction, you’re most likely to get Collins, Murphy and Green. How well do you know them?”

“Bishop Green from Cork?" asked Kane.  "I've met him a few times.  I like him."

“Green is a very good man,” said Father Jordan. “Kind. Likely to give you a fair hearing. He takes the role of pastor very seriously, tends to rule against any bishop or priest accused of crimes towards members of their own congregation. Green will be the easy one.”

“What about the other two?”

“Murphy is from Clare,” Father Jordan said, “and not well-liked. He has the closest history with Bishop Thelonious of any of them. Mind you, I don’t think he _likes_ Thelonious – I’m not entirely sure Murphy likes anybody, he tends to make himself unpopular wherever he goes. I will say this for him, though, John Murphy will not lie to you. Not ever. He’s clear and straightforward and easy to read. If he thinks your case ought to be thrown out, he’ll say so.”

“And the third? Collins, you said?”

“Ah,” said Father Jordan thoughtfully. “Yes. Finn Collins, Bishop of Limerick. Collins will be the difficult one.”

“Why?” asked Marcus. “Is he close to Thelonious too?”

“No,” said the young priest, “but he’s unpredictable. That’s the problem. Green will come into the room disposed in your favor. Present your case well, and his vote is nearly a guarantee. Murphy will come in strongly inclined to vote against you, and you can forget about winning him over. So Collins is the vote that counts, but he's also the wild card.  Very hard to read.  On the whole, he tends to side more often with Green than with Murphy, so watch the way they interact with each other. But even that, you can’t set a clock by. No, Collins is the one you’ll need to look out for. He could end up being your staunchest advocate or he could pull the entire rug out from under you when you have your back turned. I can’t make you any guarantees about Finn Collins. I’m sorry I can’t give you more to go on than that.”

“You’ve been an extraordinary help already,” said Marcus, and meant it. “I’m grateful for everything you’ve done.” Father Jordan waved off his thanks.

“Now,” he said, pulling out his pen and notebook. “Tell me about Abigail Griffin.”

* * *

They had spent weeks preparing, and slowly Marcus Kane had begun to feel the beginnings of what might be called hope. Father Jordan was thorough and careful, with a keen legal mind, and had spotted every potential hole in their argument from a mile away, sending Father Kane all up and down the country collecting evidence. It had begun to feel, maybe, just maybe, like he had a chance.

There was so little he could do for Abigail. He had nothing left to give her, but this:

He could tell the truth.

He could stand in front of the Bishops’ Tribunal and tell them Thelonious had betrayed her trust to send sixteen men to their deaths.

He could do this one last thing, before disappearing from her life forever.

He could give her justice.

Except that he had not known, until he walked into St. Mary’s Cathedral in Killarney and saw the row of three chairs in front of the altar, with all three bishops robed and seated before him, that Thelonious would actually be in the room.

The look on his face, as he sat in the front pew with his arms folded, was awful. A mix of eloquent disappointment and patronizing condescension. _Oh, you pathetic fool,_ it seemed to say. _What has she done to you?_

But Kane refused to take the bait. He refused to give in.  This was for Abigail.

This was for Jacob.

This was for all of them.

Marcus Kane had shot sixteen men dead who would never have set foot in that jail if they had not been betrayed by a man of God. The knowledge of that was all he had left in the world to hold onto.

“My name is Bishop Finn Collins, and I will be directing these proceedings,” said the man in the center chair, rising to stand and look squarely at first Kane, then Thelonious, then casting a piercing eye over Father Jordan and the handful of other men in black cassocks sprinkled throughout the church. “In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost.”

“Amen,” they chorused together, and Bishop Collins sat back down.

“I declare this Tribunal open,” he said. “We are ready to begin.”

* * *

Father Jordan had assembled a very solid case, and it was instantly clear to Marcus that he had pegged the trio correctly.  Bishop Green was kindly and attentive, Bishop Murphy was hostile but straightforward, and Bishop Collins was entirely impossible to read. His was the vote that counted most, but Marcus had no idea which way the pendulum would swing.  He listened closely and asked minutely detailed clarifying questions as Father Jordan presented evidence, in an appraising tone that sometimes caused waves of panic to course through Marcus; but he administered the same pointed level of scrutiny to Bishop Thelonious' own canon lawyer, Father Wallace (a Killarney man and a devout Crown loyalist) as he made his own case, which seemed a better sign.  Still, Marcus had no idea which direction the man was leaning even up to the final day of the tribunal, when Marcus was finally called as a witness and given permission to speak for himself.

With Thelonious, black-robed and stony-eyed, sitting in the front pew facing him.

“Our first, and most obvious question,” said Collins, “is how you yourself came by this information, if it violated the seal of the confessional in the first place.”

“I am personally acquainted with the woman who confessed it, Excellency,” he said. “She is – was – a member of my congregation. The village midwife.”

Jordan had been very clear with him about taking care in the words he used to describe Abigail Griffin.  "Unobjectionable Christian widow," the young priest had said.  "That is the impression you want them to take away.  Don't say 'doctor.'  Collins and Murphy are small-town boys.  They think midwives are women and surgeons are men.  Call Mrs. Griffin a doctor -"

"She _is_ a doctor."

"I know that, you know that, but _call_ her one, and you risk leading them to see her as a domineering harpy who intrudes into the world of men where she isn't wanted.  She is not here to speak for herself, so you must speak for her, and you must make them trust her testimony.  Honest Christian widow.  Devoted wife.  Goes to the Church for help in times of trouble.  That is the picture we are painting for them.  Be very wary," Father Jordan had said, with a hint of warning in his tone that made Marcus worry that his face were an open book, "of saying anything that would complicate their picture of her."

And Marcus, chastened, had nodded and agreed, praying his feelings about Abigail were not so transparent that it would turn Father Collins against him.

“Did she tell this to you in the confessional?” asked Collins, pulling Marcus back to the present, and he shook his head.

“No,” he said. “She said it to myself and several parishioners, close to a year ago when she first came to St. Brigid.  It was given as a reason for her distrust of Bishop Thelonious.”  He risked a direct glance at the man as he spoke his name.  Thelonious, arms folded, was staring at Marcus with such a look of condescension, such a mix of annoyance and pity, that it suddenly dawned on Marcus for the first time how confident the man was that Kane would lose and he would win.  He swallowed hard and turned back to the tribunal.

“She said those words _exactly_?” prodded Murphy, in a challenging voice. “She directly accused Bishop Thelonious of repeating something she had told him in Confession?”

“She told us very clearly he had repeated something someone told him in Confession," he said.  "I deduced myself that it had been her, which she did not deny when I asked her about it."  He spoke carefully and calmly, willing away the emotions roiling inside him at the memory of that horrible night. _Not now,_ he told the ache in his chest. _Not now, while there’s work to do._

“And you believe her?” said Bishop Green, nodding encouragingly. “You are confident that this woman's word is to be trusted?"

“I am, Excellency,” said Marcus. “She is the most honest person I have ever known in all my life.”  Thelonious, arms folded, raised one dubious eyebrow at him and he felt himself flush ever so slightly.  _Too much, Marcus,_ he cautioned himself irritably, _hold it back, be careful._

Bishop Collins sat forward then, looking down at Marcus over the bridge of his spectacles.  "I would very much like to know," he said, his face expressionless, “how you come to be so certain that this piece of tactical information could have reached the ears of the General in no other way.”

“I agree,” Bishop Murphy cut in. “The movements of Connolly and the Citizen Army were widely known.  The British Army had informants planted in half the insurgent cells.  Any one of a hundred other people could have passed along this information. Your _village midwife_ overstates her own importance.”

“I have been to Dublin,” said Marcus, “and I have spoken to the families of all the other dead men.”

This was news to the tribunal, and he suddenly had all three bishops’ full attention - as well as that of Thelonious, who had sat up a little straighter. Wallace, his lawyer, was whispering to him urgently, and Marcus felt his heart lift at the realization that some of Thelonious' placid, smug demeanor had chipped away.  He had begun to look just ever so slightly uncomfortable. 

This might work after all.

“Twelve of the other fifteen men were married,” he continued. “Twelve other women kissed their husbands goodbye that day and send them off to their deaths. I wanted to know what they knew. I wanted to ask how many of them believed they were sending their husbands to Liberty Hall, and how many thought they were going to the General Post Office. I wanted to see if anyone else had been told what Abigail Griffin had.”

“The Parable of the Thirteenth Widow,” said Green with a wry smile, and Marcus found himself remembering the flash of a red dress in the corner of his vision, strengthening his resolve.  He smiled back. 

“Sounds a bit like you’re writing your own version of the Bible, Father Kane," sneered Murphy, but Marcus - and the other bishops - ignored him.

“I learned a great deal,” he said. “Two of them had not known their husbands were leaders of the Rising until after they were executed.  Meaning, of course, that they could tell me nothing.  Three others told me some variant of the following: ‘I knew he was going somewhere dangerous but either he did not tell me or I did not ask.’”

“That leaves seven."

“Yes,” he said. “Seven women in seven different parts of the city, who did not know I was coming until I arrived and were not in communication with each other, but who all told me the exact same story. They had all been told by their husbands that morning that the republican army was leaving Liberty Hall to set up a garrison somewhere else, somewhere the British would not be looking for them.”

“Did they say where?” asked Collins. “Did they mention the post office?”

“No,” said Marcus. “They were very clear on that point. All seven husbands told all seven wives that they were decamping from Liberty Hall for a new location – and that _only Jacob Griffin knew where it was_.”

Green and Collins looked at each other, as Thelonious' expression began to darken.  The older bishop leaned forward, an expression of great interest on his face, and Marcus knew he was still on the thinnest of ice but that maybe, just maybe, at this moment, it was possible Finn Collins was on his side.

“You are certain of this?” pressed Collins.

Marcus nodded.  “Liberty Hall was only the rendezvous point,” he said. “The men met there, and went on together to the post office. Which nobody saw them enter, because Griffin had tunneled a hidden entrance for them underground. All sixteen of them were hidden inside that building, for an entire day, with no way to get word to the outside."

"What you're telling us," said Green, "is that prior to the bombing of Liberty Hall, the only person who knew that at noon the following day the rebels would be camped inside the Post Office was Jacob Griffin."

"Yes," said Marcus.  "And Jacob Griffin told no one but his wife.”

“Who could have mentioned her husband's plans to anyone,” Collins pointed out.

"And put her husband's life in danger?" said Marcus, shaking his head.  "The risk was too great.  No, she was very clear," he said, turning a cold stare toward Thelonious.  "She said not a word to anyone else - except the one person she should have been able to trust.  Her confessor."

“Those men were criminals,” said Bishop Murphy irritably. “They committed treason. Even were it to be proven that His Excellency Bishop Thelonious were in some way connected with their deaths, which you have not yet proven to my satisfaction, he would have been acting on the side of law and order. The rebels had to be stopped.”

“The Rising is over,” said Marcus impatiently, “and I am not here to quarrel about politics. This is much simpler than that. This is about _fidelity._ This is about _trust_.” He looked at them all, one after the other.  Murphy was annoyed and unconvinced.  Murphy could be no help to him.  Green was nodding him on, his face encouraging, and Marcus knew Green's vote would be with Abigail.  It was only Finn Collins he had to persuade. It was Finn Collins who needed to understand.

“They come to us,” he said, his voice passionate, “men, women, children, and we ask them to reveal their darkest, most turbulent selves. Not for us - not so we may accumulate power by collecting their secrets - but for _them._ We stand in the place of Christ and offer them absolution, to heal their hearts and guide them back towards the light.  We do not appoint ourselves God Almighty, empowered to determine with our own petty mortal minds, which of their secrets we ought or ought not to keep.  We are not given that choice.  We hold _all_ of it sacred.  We protect _all_ their hearts.  Whether we approve or not.  Who are we to these people - why do we, why does the Church even _matter_? – if we cannot keep sacred a trust as fundamental as this?  If Abigail Griffin never trusted a man of the clergy again,” he said, and the almost imperceptible falter in his voice did not escape the notice of Bishop Finn Collins, “I would understand why. She would be right to. Her husband is dead because her Church betrayed her. She came to us for comfort, and we offered her lies.  We cannot wish it away.  We must face it, and accept the consequences, even if she cannot forgive, if she despises us forever.  We wronged her.  The only thing we have left to offer her, the only peace of mind we can give, is to call it by its name.  To acknowledge it as the betrayal that it was, rather than covering it over for politics' sake."

He could not immediately say any more after that.  His heart was too full.  He risked a look at Father Jordan, wondering if he had stepped over the line, revealed too much of himself.  The younger priest was watching him curiously but his face was hard to read.  Almost against his will, Marcus found his eyes drawn to Bishop Thelonious, whose expression was a great deal clearer. Naked contempt, that was what Marcus saw, and the _malice_ in the man - the callous cruelty of his treatment toward Abigail, both in revealing her confession and in writing her that letter - struck Marcus for the first time like a blow to the chest.  There was no warmth, no kindness in Bishop Thelonious.  He was not a shepherd of souls, he was a politician, and his scorn for Marcus' soft mortal heart was evident in every line of his face.

"You dismiss politics as beneath you," said Murphy, raising a disdainful eyebrow, "which shows how little you understand the realities of the world we live in.  Politics is the only way things get done.  Politics will be the only way you ever rise above your current, fairly meager, station.  That collar, and the brotherhood of whom it marks you as a member, are the only things that provide you any degree of credibility or authority on that desolate little island of yours.  And collars, boy, can be taken away."

"If that is God's will, then let it be done," said Marcus, standing up to leave.  "I would rather be an honest man than a dishonest priest."  And he turned his back on them all.  As he walked out of the sanctuary, Father Jasper close at heel, he could feel Bishop Finn Collins’ curious gaze follow him out the door.

* * *

"Barring your somewhat theatrical exit," said Father Jordan as they returned to the inn that night, "you conducted yourself extremely well."  Marcus pushed open the door and followed the younger man inside the cool wooden darkness of the foyer.

"Now what happens?" asked Marcus.

"We wait," said the lawyer simply.  “They tribunal will spend the next few days in discussion and in prayer."

"Days?"

"This is not a court trial, Father Kane," he said, as Marcus followed him down the hall to the stairs up to their rooms.  "Nobody has another case on their docket, waiting to be attended to. They will take their time.”

“Do you have any guess -“ Marcus began, but Father Jordan shook his head.

“I never guess,” he said. “We will know what we know when we know it. That is all I can say.” 

He stopped halfway up the stairs and turned back down to look at Marcus. “For what it’s worth,” he said, “you did everything right. That woman deserves justice. I pray we can help her get it.”

“I’m very glad to have had you on my side,” Marcus said. “It must be rewarding to feel that the work you do has such significance.”

Father Jordan paused, considering.

“Yes and no,” he said thoughtfully. “I am very glad to be able to help you with a case such as this, but canon law is not why I joined the priesthood.” He smiled at Marcus. “I envy you, and your small country parish,” he admitted conspiratorially. “I would trade places with you in a heartbeat.”

Marcus raised an eyebrow.

“Perhaps,” he said, “that is something we should discuss.”

**SUMMER  
**

Finn Collins came through.

Just as Father Jordan had hoped, the tribunal decided 2-1 against Bishop Thelonious and voted to relieve him of his duties.  He was not formally defrocked, but he was no longer a bishop nor assigned to a parish; he would live out the rest of his career in some administrative post back in Dublin, where Marcus fervently hoped he would never run into Abigail.

Of course, it was possible Abigail was not in Dublin.

She had been gone for eight months, and Marcus Kane did not know where she was, whether she was coming back, or under what possible circumstances he might ever see her again.  He lay awake many nights, staring up at the ceiling, lost in tortured thoughts.  If something terrible happened to Abigail, he sometimes wondered darkly, how would he ever even know?  If she had gone to America to be with her daughter, and the ship had sunk in the crossing, how many months or even years might it be before the news came anywhere near St. Brigid? 

The only thing worse than losing Abigail was not knowing where she was.  If she was well.  If she was safe.  He was haunted now not only by Jacob Griffin, but by his widow too. 

The more months passed, the harder sleep became; which was unfortunate, because now he needed it.  His life was suddenly busier than it had ever been before.  Bishop Collins, appointed overseer for the search for a new Bishop of Kerry, had initially offered the job to Marcus; he politely declined, but agreed to assist in the process of finding a replacement for Thelonious.  Which meant spending at least one or two weeks out of every month, between March and August, traipsing around Western Ireland to meet with members of the clergy, collecting a list of possible candidates to submit to the Vatican.  This particular week saw them both in Galway City, where they believed they had finally found their man in the current assistant bishop.  This was good news - both because Father Wells was an excellent priest, gentle and kindly and beloved by his parish, opposite to Thelonious in many ways and therefore an ideal successor - and because it meant the search was at an end. 

Which meant it was time for Marcus to go home.

They had parted ways at Galway Station.  Marcus had seen off the bishop's train (he was bound for Connemara to spend a few days with his sister) before making his way to the crowded counter to buy a ticket and make his way back to the island.

Except there was no train.

“Ballinskelligs, is it? I’m very sorry, Father,” said the station master, “but there’s no one getting home to Kerry tonight.  The 5:45 won't be coming through."

“Fine,” he said wearily. “I’ll stay the night here and be back in the morning. What’s the earliest train?”

The man shook his head. “None leaving from here," he said.  “There’s a problem with the southbound tracks.  Kerry-bound trains are all rerouted to the next station over, about fourteen miles out. There’s a few others headed out that way, we can take you down in the carriage and there’s a decent inn. You can catch the 8:20 back to Ballinskelligs in the morning from there.”

“Thank you,” said Marcus, who had no interest in hauling his bags fourteen miles in a bumpy carriage, was tired of inns and just wanted to sleep, but forcing a polite smile anyway. “That will be fine.”

The station master waved over a young boy in a porter’s uniform. “The good Father here is headed to catch up with the Kerry train,” he said. “Put those cases on the carriage bound for Athenry.”

“Athenry?” said Marcus, startled and flustered.

“Aye,” said the station master, “did I not say? Athenry is where the Kerry train comes through.  Do you know the town at all?”

“No,” he said. “I once knew a woman from there.  That's all.” And he walked away before the station master could ask him anything else.

* * *

Marcus knew, actually, almost nothing about Abigail Griffin's past.  He knew little about her years in Dublin and even less about her life before.  It was only through a chance remark from Young Miller that he knew she had been born and raised in Athenry, and Young Miller only remembered it because of the song.  Marcus had heard him humming to himself as he walked past the rectory with the post.

"That's a Galway song you're singing there, Kerry boy," said Marcus, laughing.  "Where on earth did you learn that on this island?"

"It was the lady doctor's song," said Miller.  "I heard her singing it once."

"Did you?" asked Marcus, the pang in his heart at any thoughts of Abigail salved the tiniest bit by the sweet picture forming in his mind.  "I didn't know she sang."

"I don't think she sings in front of people," said Miller with a smile.  "I've sat next to her in church and you can hardly hear her during the hymns. But she was singing like mad that day.  She was cleaning the surgery when I came in to bring her a letter.  She was giddy as a bluebird.  She told me about the song, and I thought it sounded awfully sad but she said she liked the way it reminded her of the town where she grew up."

"I always thought it was a sad song too," said Marcus.  "But it surprises me not a whit that Abigail Griffin would find something to delight her even in a ballad about a prison transport ship bound for Australia."

"Does he die, the husband in the song?" queried Miller.  "I wanted to stay and ask, but I had to take the post to Blake Farm.  And then, of course, she was gone the next day."

And then it clicked.

 _"I came in to bring her a letter._ _She was giddy as a bluebird._ "

Marcus felt sick.

"I don't know," he said, swallowing hard, trying to block out the image of Young Miller walking in on a beaming, lighthearted Abigail, sweeping the floor and singing hometown songs, to hand her a letter with the bishop's seal.  "The song doesn't say.  It just ends with her waiting and watching for him to come home."

"Oh," said Young Miller, disappointed.  "So there's no way to know, really, if they end up happy or sad."

"No," Marcus said to him.  "There's no way to know."

* * *

He had, of course, no sense of what Abigail's life in this town had been like - who her parents had been, where she had lived, what streets she had walked coming home from church and school.  But still, as the old carriage rattled down the cobblestones of Athenry's main road, he felt, in some strange way, close to her again.  It was ever so faintly like being together.  She had breathed this air, once, seen this sky, walked these streets.

It was not enough, but it was something.

The carriage's four passengers were deposited at an inn near the center of town, where the Galway station master had secured them rooms, just after dark.  The carriage would return for them in the morning to ferry their luggage to the railway station.  Marcus was exhausted, but the drive had been long and hot and dusty, so thirst won out over going straight to bed.  He gave his traveling cases to the porter and made his way to the pub downstairs for a drink.

“On the house,” said the barkeep, nodding at Marcus’ collar as he pulled the pint, and Marcus smiled and thanked him.  The pub was moderately crowded, but the farthest corner away from the bar had one small, empty table.  All he wanted was to finish his beer in peace, then make his way upstairs to bed.

He was looking out the window, just a little over halfway finished with his drink, when he first became aware that someone was standing behind him, trying politely to get his attention.  He turned around, and saw a gray-haired man in a workman’s uniform, holding his cap in his hand and wringing it anxiously.

“Beg pardon, Father, I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said. “But it’s my daughter.”

He didn’t need to say any more. It was written all over his face.

"What's your name?" he said, standing up and following the man out.

"Vincent," said the man.  "Daughter's named Maya.  She was taken with the fever a few days ago, and it got worse last night. She’s been on the brink all day. The doctor is with her now, says there’s every chance the fever could break, but Athenry shares a parish priest with Salthill and he only comes in on Wednesdays and Sundays, and when I saw you in the pub, I thought –“

“You’d like me to come give your daughter the Rites,” he said. “Of course. How far away do you live?”

“Just three streets over,” the man said. “But we should hurry.”

“All right, Vincent,” said Marcus. "Lead the way.”

* * *

Vincent led Marcus out of the inn, down an alley and across the high street to a small stone house in the center of town. “We have the upstairs floor,” he said, leading Marcus around the side of the building to a door that opened onto a narrow staircase. “Come with me.”

They could hear a bustle of voices as they climbed the stairs. “Mrs. Harper lives on the ground floor,” he said, “she’s the landlady. She’s been here all day helping tend to Maya. She’s the one that heard a priest had come in on the carriage from Galway Station and sent me to find you.”

“I’m glad she did,” Marcus started to say, but the words died in his throat as Vincent opened the door.

She was bent over a table, soaking white cloths in a bowl of water.  Her face was turned away from him, in profile, her thick braid hanging over her shoulder, the crisp clean angles of her nose and chin sharply silhouetted against the dim flickering light of the gas lamp beside her that burnished her hair in gold.  She was like something out of a Vermeer painting.  _Woman In Green Dress With Bowl._   She was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. 

"I've brought the priest from the inn," said Vincent, and Marcus felt his heart begin to pound in his chest.

 _Oh, look up, look up,_ he pleaded with her.  _Look up at me._

She set down the cloth she was holding, dried off her hands on her white apron, and then she looked up, and everything stopped.

The world stopped spinning.  The air stopped moving.  Everything in the world was frozen still.

"You," she whispered.  "You.  You're here.  How are you here?"

"Abigail," he said.  "Abigail."

"How did you find me?" she breathed, eyes wide in shock and wonder.  But he was prevented from answering by a commotion in the adjoining kitchen as Mrs. Harper, a pretty older woman with blond-and-gray hair, sailed into the room.

"Oh, good," she said without preamble.  "You've come with the priest at last."

"This is Father Marcus Kane, from Kerry," said Abigail stiffly, tucking her loose hair behind her ears and smoothing her apron in a series of nervous gestures. "An acquaintance of mine."  She emphasized the second word very faintly.  Marcus suspected she meant it to sting, and it did.  "Though I told you both," she said firmly to Vincent, "we don't need a priest."

Vincent looked at her curiously, then at Marcus, but wisely said nothing.

“Always best to be on the safe side,” said Mrs. Harper. “The Sacrament never does any harm."

“It’s morbid,” said Abigail, picking up a pitcher of water and returning to the bed in the corner, near a wide-open window (to let in what breeze there was) where he saw a girl in a sweat-drenched shift lying on a striped ticking mattress.  "The fever will break.  Maya does not need Last Rites.  She is not going to die."

“It isn’t morbid,” he insisted, not sure why they both felt suddenly so compelled to snap at each other.  "The Sacrament is not only for the dying.  It is not a harbinger of doom.  It is a way to ask God's blessing on the sick as well.  To ask God's grace to heal them."

“She’s sixteen years old and suffering from fever,” said Abigail icily, laying wet cloths along the barely-conscious girl’s arms and legs. “She goes to Mass every Sunday.  She’s studying to be a nursery school teacher.  She has never even kissed a boy. But your God will only deign to give her relief if _you_ ask him. Not her father, or her neighbor, or me. Only you, the one with the collar.  Is that the way it works?"

“Now, Mrs. Griffin,” said Vincent. “He’s here to help. He’s here because I asked him.”

Abigail did not turn around, but something in her posture seemed to soften.

“I’m sorry,” she said, a little stiffly, not looking at Marcus, though she sounded – surprisingly – as though perhaps she meant it.

"Mrs. Harper," he said, "have you a spare room in your flat downstairs?"

"I do," she nodded, "why?  Will you be staying?"

"Not for me," he said.  "For Vincent.  How long has it been since either of you have slept?"

"They've been up with Maya two days straight," said Abigail.

"So have you," said Vincent, and Marcus looked at her sharply. Sure enough, he could see shadows under her eyes, a dull unwashed sheen to her hair, and her green dress was a little the worse for wear. She had been at this girl’s bedside with the family for two days, waiting for the fever to break. He wondered if it was possible for her to look at Maya without seeing her own daughter. He did not imagine that it was.

“I’ll be fine,” said Abigail firmly. “This is my job.  But Father Kane is right, it would be good for you both to get some rest.  He can perform the Anointing, if you insist, and then he can go back to the inn.  I'll stay with Maya and call you if anything changes."

Mrs. Harper took Vincent by the shoulder and steered him out the door.  "Bed," she said to him firmly.  "I'll lock you in if I have to."

"You as well, Mrs. Harper," said Abigail, "I mean it.  Doctor's orders."

"I don't want to leave you alone," she said.

"I'll stay," said Marcus, before Abigail could object.  "I'll stay with her.  I can come get you if anything changes, or run out and fetch anything she might need.  You two, go to sleep.  I'll stay."

It was impossible for anyone to protest after that, so Mrs. Harper led Vincent down the stairs, closing the door behind her.  Marcus fetched a chair from the far corner and pulled it next to Maya's side, across the bed from the chair where Abigail sat with her table of bottles and cloths.

"You could have left that chair in the corner and just sat there with your Bible," she said dryly.  "I know that's what you prefer."

"That was the old Marcus Kane," he said, pulling out the tiny leather case every priest keeps always in his coat pocket and setting it on the table. "You said it yourself.  'Be a person,' you told me.  So I'm trying."

"I was a bit harsh with you that night," she admitted, softening a little.

"Possibly," he conceded, "but you weren't wrong."

Abigail watched as he opened the case and pulled out a small purple scapular, like a gold-edged silk ribbon, which he kissed, unfolded, and placed around his neck. Then he removed a small glass bottle of golden oil and a tiny white cloth. He unfolded the cloth and set it on the table next to Maya and unstoppered the bottle.

He looked at Abigail. Abigail looked at him.

They both made the sign of the cross, and Abigail bowed her head and closed her eyes. Everything in the room seemed to slow and still around them, just as it had in the birthing room with Octavia, and Marcus felt himself carried along by Maya’s labored breathing. He closed his eyes and breathed deeply. He could feel Abigail sitting next to him, he could feel her strength, her integrity, her skill. He could feel the air around her charged with her Abigail-ness and he let it flow into him, and prayed for it to flow into Maya.  _Let her be Your hands,_ he whispered to God inside his mind.  _If it be your will, Father, grant her the ability to save this girl._ He let a few drops of the golden oil fall onto his thumb.

"Through this holy anointing,” he said, gently smoothing the tangle of sweaty dark hair from Maya's face and marking a cross with the oil on her warm forehead, “may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit."  Then he took Maya’s left hand in his, turned it palm upward, and marked a cross on it.

“May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up,” he murmured in a soft voice, then did the same to her right palm. Abigail was silent beside him, and when he released Maya’s hand to cross himself again and put the oil away, he saw that she was crying.

Neither of them said anything for a long time.

"Octavia wrote to me," said Abigail finally.  "She told me about the Bishop's Tribunal. About what you did.  I don't - I don't know what to say."

"You don't have to say anything," he said, busying himself with adjusting the cool damp cloths on Maya's arm in front of him, unable to meet her eyes.  "You owe me no thanks, you owe me no gratitude.  It changes nothing.  It undoes nothing.  It was simply the only thing I had left to give you.  You and I, we paid our debts.  Thelonious did not.  I thought perhaps, if you had the justice you deserved, then you might, one day, cease to torment yourself for the choice you made that day."

She looked up at him sharply.

"Which choice?" she said, startled and a little afraid, her eyes wide and dark like a trapped wild animal.

"When you told Father Thelonious where the Citizen Army was going," he said evenly, "knowing that he would tell the British general."

She did not appear, at first, to react.  Her hands paused in their movements for only a fraction of a second - you would not have seen it if you were not looking for it - and her face remained carefully expressionless.  The only indication, in fact, that she had heard his words at all was that he felt her entirely stop breathing.  It was as though all the air went out of the room.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said finally, in a flat voice.

“I’m not judging you,” he said. “That’s what I’m trying to say. I understand it now. Why you did what you did. You saw a war coming on, and you tried to stop it.”

That startled her, and she looked up at him, meeting his eyes directly for the first time.

“Everyone knew what side Thelonious was on,” he continued. “You must have known too. He was always an ally of the Crown. He was always a political creature. He stood up there on the altar of his church in Dublin and he preached sermons on the divine right of kings, on submission to the will of God. Thelonious knew revolution was coming, and he opposed it from the beginning. There was at least some good in his intentions - he wanted to stop the Rising, or at the very least to keep his own people out of it - but he spoke out because he wanted it _known_ that he spoke out. He wanted the right people to hear him, so after the dust settled he would land on the winning side.  Everyone knew.  And of all the Catholic priests in all of Dublin, you came to Thelonious for Confession. You did not go to your own priest, to your own church.  No one ever asked why.  You went all the way across town, out of your own parish, you found Father Thelonius, and you told him everything Jacob said.”

He watched her crumple, then, her spine collapsing inwardly, and she braced herself with both hands on the striped blue mattress of Maya's bed.  He reached across the motionless girl and placed both of his hands on hers.  She did not pull away.  She seemed scarcely to feel it.  It was as though she was hardly in the room with him at all.

"It wasn't a mistake," he said.  "It was brave.  You were trying to save your husband.  You were trying to stop the war. You thought if Father Thelonious told the general to move the infantry from Liberty Hall to the Post Office, that Connolly and the republicans would see them there, realize they were beaten, and run."

There was a long moment of silence.  Then slowly, imperceptibly, she nodded. 

"Because you didn't know," he said, tightening his hands around hers.  _"You didn't know they were already inside."_

She closed her eyes, and he felt his heart turn over in his chest at the way the light from the gas lamp illuminated the rivulets of tears flowing endlessly down her cheeks, turning them into ribbons of diamond.

"No," she said falteringly.  "I didn't know.  I thought I could stop it.  I thought I could save them."  He gripped both her hands in his, and she opened her eyes again, shining with tears, and looked straight at him, and it was more intimate than making love had been, that look.  It was the most naked Abigail Griffin had ever been in her life.  “I begged him not to go,” she said. “I told him it would end in bloodshed. I told all of them. I wanted a free Ireland too, I still do, I still believe in that – I will never stop believing in that – but there weren't enough men.  I told them that.  They didn't have enough men.  I told them this was not the way.  I warned Jacob, over and over, but he didn't listen.  Nobody would listen.  So I did the only thing I could think of to do."

“To stop a war,” said Marcus gently, and she nodded. “So did I,” he said. “I was trying to stop a war too.”

She looked up at him, and he saw it happen, the moment everything changed.  The moment she realized he was right, about both of them.  The moment she realized they were exactly the same.

“I didn’t join the British army because I wanted to betray my people,” he said. “I had no notion it would ever come to that. I believed I was on the side of the peacekeepers, that was all. I did not understand, before the Rising, what that meant. I thought I was standing behind the forces of law and order. I thought if I put on that uniform and took up that rifle, that I was protecting the country I loved, not hurting it. I wanted to stop the war from coming too, Abigail.  If you failed those sixteen men, I failed them too.  So did Thelonious.  And so we all had to pay.  We all had to lose something.  You lost your daughter," he said, and she pulled her hands away then to brush the tears from her face.  "And I lost you.  That was the cost of our choices.  That was why I had to call the Bishop's Tribunal. We killed those men together, all three of us, but only two of us paid for it.  Something had to be taken away from Thelonious too.  So we could all begin to live again, knowing justice was done."

"We killed them," she said, repeating his words numbly.  "We failed, and now they're dead. They’re all dead. Nearly five hundred people. Sixteen rebel leaders. My husband. All those people.  Gone, because of us. Because we couldn't stop the war."

"We could never have stopped the war," he said. “It was _always_ going to happen. It will happen again. You and I played our parts. We did not stand idly by and let the revolution pass without us. We tried. That’s all we can ask of ourselves, in the face of these great moments, when they arrive at our doorstep. We don’t know we’re inside of history until after it’s happened. We think we’re just people, living our lives, making decisions. I thought I was a soldier. I thought that was all I was. You were a wife trying to save your husband. We had no idea what we were up against, how big the thing was that we were inside of, until after it was too late.”

Maya stirred in her sleep just then, and Abigail was instantly at her side, stroking her hair and pressing a hand on her forehead. Marcus saw her entire body collapse in grateful relief.

“Her fever has broken,” she said. “She’s out of danger.” 

“Thank God,” said Marcus, and meant it. Abigail looked at him with what was almost a smile.

"Don't you go taking credit for this," she said, and Marcus smiled back at her. 

"No," he said.  "This was you.  I know this was you."

For a long moment they both looked down at the languid, half-conscious Maya, watching her eyes flutter open and then closed again. 

“Should I go wake her father?” asked Marcus finally.

“Not just yet,” said Abigail. “Let them sleep. Neither of them have slept.”

“What about you?”

“I will,” she said. “When I get back to my own bed.”

"Is this where you've been the whole time?" he said, and it was the closest either of them had come to mentioning the day she left the island.  She stiffened, but nodded.  "So you live here now," he said.  "Athenry.  You came home."

“I don’t have a home,” she said wearily. “This is just a place I used to live that needed a doctor.”  And she turned away from him.  "You should go," she said flatly.  "I'll call Vincent in a little while.  Maya is out of danger.  I no longer need assistance.  Go back to the inn.  Catch your train."

"Abigail -"

"Go, Marcus," she said.  "Please.  Just go."

He did not fight her.  He stood up from his chair and moved it back to the corner where he had found it.  He straightened it perfectly.  It was as though he was never there.

Halfway to the door, he stopped and turned back to her.

"He had fair hair, didn't he?" he said, and Abigail froze.  "Maybe an inch or two taller than me.  Green shirt, green and gray wool coat.  And a scar on his chin."

"Marcus, what -"

"Am I right?" he asked urgently.  "Was that him?"  Stunned, she nodded.  "I remember him," he said.  "I remember all of them.  All their faces.  And I kept the list of all their names.  But I never put the two together.  So when I went to Dublin - when I met the other widows of the Rising - I looked at photographs.  I wanted to know.  I needed to know who they were.  I needed them to be people, not ghosts to me.  Real people."  He looked at her.  "I remember him," he said.  "I remember Jacob Griffin.  I remember” – and he almost smiled, as he said it, there was something like admiration in his voice – “he died proud. They all did. Heads unbowed. No shame, no tears, no trembling. They surrendered to stop the British from firing on the rest of the town. They turned themselves in to end the violence. They died like heroes, Abigail, all of them. They died like Irishmen.”

She closed her eyes, tears streaming down her white cheeks, fists clenched in her lap.

“I know that’s no comfort to you, now,” he said. “After all this time. After all you’ve lost. But I needed to say it. I needed you to know that I _saw_ him. I saw them all. I still see them. I always will. They were real to me, Abigail. They still are.”

He moved back towards her then, to where she still sat at Maya's bedside.  She tensed a little at his approach, but did not tear her eyes away from him.  “I thought the collar would heal my wounds,” he said, “but it didn’t. All it did was cover them over with lies. Those people, back on St. Brigid? Thelonious told them I’m a shopkeeper’s son from Killarney. They don’t know. They don’t see me. You are the only one. You are the only one in all the world who has ever seen me. I don’t ask your forgiveness, Abigail, I have not earned it. But I want you to know . . ."

He stopped, then, and knelt down beside her chair.  He reached up a hand to touch her face, running his fingertip through the tracks of her tears.  Then gently, lightly, he marked a cross made of tears on first her forehead, then her lips, then her heart, the way he had done to Maya's fevered brow.  She stared at him, uncomprehending.  He touched her face a second time, caressing the tears on the other side, and then, as she looked on in wonder, he marked himself the same way.  Then he took her tightly-clenched hand from her lap, turned it over and eased her fist open.  Then he pressed his warm, soft mouth against the palm of her hand and kissed it, over and over and over again.  "I want you to know," he said, finally, forcing himself to let go of her and stand back up, "that I see you, too."

Then he closed the door behind him, and was gone.

 

**WINTER  
**

She arrived by boat on a Tuesday, with the post.

Just like before.

This time, however, it was the Christmas post, eliminating any chance of slipping in relatively unnoticed. (It was a foolish plan to begin with, of course, she ought to have known better; once Old Miller told Mrs. Monroe then Mrs. Monroe would tell everybody and the whole island would have known the lady doctor was back before she had even reached the cottage.) She stepped onto the dock, eyes downcast to avoid tripping on her wet skirts, and looked up to see a vast crowd gathered by the boat house, waiting for their parcels.

There seemed a general unspoken agreement among them to behave as though both her absence and her return were entirely normal and expected; she was met with a chorus of murmured greetings – “Good afternoon, Mrs. Griffin,” “Good to have you back, Mrs. Griffin” – but no questions.

 _Yet,_ she thought with a sigh, wondering what would happen when she arrived at Blake Farm and was finally forced to face Octavia.

Octavia was the only person on St. Brigid to whom Abigail had given her whereabouts, and that had, at first, been only for the sake of the baby. Indra had not even been christened when Abigail left, she had been tiny and vulnerable and too young altogether to be left on an island with no healer and the nearest doctor on the mainland half a day’s journey away. Abigail was farther away even than that – Athenry was over 150 miles from the dock at Ballinskelligs where you caught Old Miller’s boat to St. Brigid – but there was one very old, very infrequent train, and she had promised Octavia that she could be there in a day if she was needed.

She had said all of this by letter, of course. She had not waited, after the night Marcus came to her – _Father Kane,_ she reminded herself– to speak to anyone. She had simply packed the one suitcase with her personal belongings, left everything else in the surgery, and walked down the sea road to knock on Old Miller’s door. “Two pounds six if you’ll take me to the mainland now,” was all she said, and he had asked no questions, but simply shook his son awake, pulled his coat on, and led the way to the boat house. So it was to Octavia’s letters that she owed her knowledge of all the tribunal and all the other news from the island. 

She had very carefully not mentioned, or inquired about, Father Kane in any of her letters since he had stumbled upon her by chance in Athenry four months ago, and Octavia had not mentioned him either. 

The sea road led her up from the docks, past the village road to the hill where the Church of St. Brigid sat. She could not make her way down to her cottage without passing by the rectory. She had thought about this the entire journey from Ballinskelligs, sitting in the back of the boat, blessing the taciturn Millers for their lack of small talk. She thought about it all the way up from the docks to the top of the hill. As the church grew closer and closer in the distance, the rectory (and the man inside it) looming larger and larger, she felt her heart begin to pound like a drum in her chest. He could step outside at any moment. He could be in the churchyard. He could meet her walking down the road to the village. It was early afternoon, he might be inside making his tea. She might see him moving around through the kitchen window as she passed by. He was so near she thought she could feel him, and yet he had never been further away than he was at that moment.

It did not matter, she told herself firmly. It was for Octavia that she had come back. The island still had no doctor, and Indra was teething poorly. Abigail had left with no warning, for reasons of her own, but the child should not suffer for it. This had nothing to do with Father Kane. She was sure of it.

She was almost entirely sure of it.

She pulled her cloak tighter around her as she walked into the teeth of the wind, up the hill to the church. She was staring straight ahead, down the sea road, which crested the hill and then ran down through the fields to the cliffs where she could just see the roof of her own cottage. That was where her gaze was directed. That was where her mind was. So it was as much a mystery to her as to anyone why her feet developed a mind of their own and turned left, off the road, down the gravel path that led to the rectory. Even more a mystery how she found herself knocking on the door.

She heard movement behind it, in the kitchen, and her heart stopped altogether for a moment. She remembered a yellow tea towel and a tin bowl and the feel of Marcus Kane’s skin underneath her hands and the way his dark eyes had met hers with an endearing combination of amusement, embarrassment, resignation and intimacy, as if to say, _This was not how I planned it, but here we are._ She had spent a great deal of time over the past year wondering – trying not to wonder – about when her feelings for him had begun to change, but it felt like a true thing to say to herself, _yes, it happened here, it was here, with the bloody leg and Mrs. Monroe’s biscuits and that rueful smile. That was the moment._

And then the rectory door opened, and she could see into the kitchen where everything looked exactly the same as it had that day, she could even see the tin bowl.

But the man at the door was not Marcus Kane.

“Hello,” he said warmly. “What can I do for you? Would you like to come in?”

Abigail did not know how to respond to this. She had braced her whole body, every muscle tensed, against the vision of Marcus Kane in her mind, so to find him unexpectedly replaced by a gangly, shaggy-haired young man half her age, with a wide beaming smile and a cassock far too large for him, deflated her entirely. She felt her knees give out a little, all that coiled-up tension disappearing in a snap and leaving her shaken. Instantly he offered her his arm and tried to usher her inside.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I need to get to – that is – I only stopped by to see the priest.”

“You’ve found him,” he said, beaming. “I’m Father Jasper Jordan, from Galway. I’m the new pastor.”

“He doesn’t – Father Kane doesn’t live here anymore?”

Father Jordan looked at her appraisingly for a moment, then his face lit up.  "Oh!" he exclaimed.  "Oh, you must be Abigail Griffin."  She nodded, and he tilted his head and regarded her in puzzlement.  "But I can't think why he didn't tell you," he said.  "I was sure he would have wanted you, of all people, to know why he left."

There were many things she would have liked to stay and ask Father Jordan, but the second she opened her mouth to speak she felt a tidal wave of weeping begin to rise up inside her and it was all she could do to swallow it down and keep herself from collapsing in tears right there on his threshold. 

“I’m sorry,” she said, not caring if she was rude. “I’m sorry, I have to go.” And she whirled around, nearly ran down the gravel path back to the sea road, feeling her entire face and body crumple. Father Jordan called something after her, but she did not hear.

Marcus was gone.

Against all probability, through some divine stroke of luck, he had stumbled upon her in Athenry. He had sat by her side in the sickroom with Maya, and he had looked at her with such compassion and understanding in his eyes, and she had felt her heart swell inside her chest when she looked at him with some intoxicating blend of affection and sorrow and desire and _relief._ He had seen her, seen all the way down to her bones.  He had looked her in the eye and called her by name and absolved her, in some strange way, and she had been so overcome that she had not been able to bear his presence, his kind eyes any longer, she had sent him back to the inn and the train and the ferry and the church on the island.  _That was your chance, Abigail,_ she said to herself as she stumbled down the sea road to Blake Farm, tears in her eyes. _And you missed it. That was your last chance._

It had taken her four months, one panicked letter from Octavia, and a hundred and sixty-five miles by foot, horse-cart, train and ferry, to arrive at his door - and he was gone, without a word.

She wondered if it was some act of retribution from Bishop Thelonious, some final punishment – reassigning Marcus to some distant village far away from the island. Far away from _her._ She wondered if he had known, when he came to her in Athenry, that his life on St. Brigid was over _,_ that he might never see her again. _  
_

She wondered whether Bishop Thelonious had known what was in their hearts even before they had known it themselves.  She wondered which of them the punishment was for.

She cried the whole walk to Blake Farm, relieved to pass no one on the way. The cold December air chilled the tears on her cheeks, tugged at her braid, and whipped her brown cloak around her with dull snapping sounds, like the sail of a ship. It was the solstice tonight, she remembered suddenly, and it felt right somehow that she would spend the darkest night of the year alone in that cold cottage by the sea, still full of the ghosts she and Marcus had left there twelve months and a lifetime ago.

She could see Lincoln and Bellamy off in the sheep pen as she turned off the sea road onto the rough cow-path towards the farmhouse. They had hired a new farmhand since she left, she realized, noticing a third figure crouched in the dirt of the vegetable patch nearby, and it lightened her heavy heart a little. _Life went on,_ she thought. _Always. No matter what. Hearts break and bleed, and people leave you, but babies learn to crawl and roots grow deep in the soil and the year turns its corner so the days grow long again. Things go on. They always go on. You will live through this long dark night, Abigail Griffin, and the night will be just a little shorter tomorrow, and you will go on too._

Lincoln saw her and waved. She waved back, then saw Lincoln turn over his shoulder and say something to Bellamy, pointing down at her. Bellamy turned and saw her, and he waved as well.

Then the man in the vegetable patch stood up, dusted the dirt off the knees of his trousers, and looked down the hill at her, and her heart turned over in her chest.

There he was.

She watched, rooted to the dusty path, as Marcus Kane cast aside the pick in his hand and strode through the field towards her. His face was purposeful, serious. His eyes never left hers. Her heart pulsed with infinite speed, like a trapped hummingbird beating its wings against the inside of her ribcage.

“I went to the rectory,” she said, by way of greeting as soon as he was within earshot.  "He said – I was afraid – I didn’t know –“

“We’ll do all that in a minute,” he said, “just stop talking,” and then he was kissing her.

He had been clean-shaven when she left, but she felt the roughness of a few days’ worth of beard rasp against her skin as his mouth seized hers, sending little shivers of sensation down her spine that had nothing to do with the cold. He kissed her for what felt both like forever, and not nearly long enough, his breath so warm and the heat he roused inside her so powerful that she forgot it was December. It was summer, here inside Marcus Kane’s arms, infinite summer, and she flung her arms around him with reckless abandon, not caring whether Bellamy and Lincoln were watching (which, obviously, they were).

Finally, when he pulled away long enough for them both to catch their breath, he said her name and smiled.

“Hello, Abigail,” he said. “I’m sorry. I should have begun with that.”

“You began just fine,” she said. “That was very well done.”

And there it was again, that sparkle in his eyes, that warm, affectionate amusement at his own foolishness, and all began to feel right again.

“Come inside for tea,” he said. “I have so much to tell you.”

* * *

“She isn’t crying,” said Abigail, somewhat accusingly, picking up tiny little Indra - now just turned a year old, dark-haired and round-faced, with big serious eyes that glowered slightly at Abigail but lit up in Octavia’s arms – and finding her the picture of health.  "Her gums are fine."

"Well, yes," admitted Octavia, who was standing in the doorway of the bedchamber where Abigail had insisted, first thing, on coming to check on the baby.  "It's possible that my letter was the _tiniest_ bit exaggerated.”

“You told me she cried day and night and had a fever."

"I made up the fever," said Octavia.  "She does cry.  Sometimes during the day, sometimes at night.  But only when she's hungry.  So really that part was only a little lie."

"Octavia, I came a hundred and sixty-five miles to make sure your baby did not have an infection."

"Exactly," said Octavia.  "Because you would never have come if I told you the truth." 

Abigail was silent.

"Would you have come if I hadn't said Indra was sick?" she asked pointedly.  "Would you have come if I told you that he came back from Athenry and was unrecognizable as the old Marcus Kane?  Because of you, Abigail.  I look at him and I see a man who has completely transformed himself for the woman he loves.  Who has atoned in every way it's possible for someone to atone.  Would you have come back to St. Brigid if I told you that?"

Abigail didn't answer, but they both knew. 

“It’s more complicated than that,” said Abigail, sitting on the side of the bed, cradling little Indra in her lap.

“It seems remarkably simple to me,” said Octavia, arms folded, and Abigail couldn’t help but laugh a little at how quickly she had adopted the demeanor of a scolding mother. _You’re going to be just fine,_ she said silently to Indra, kissing the baby’s dark curls. Indra shot Abigail a withering stare through her tiny blue eyes, yawned, and said nothing.

“I know it seems that way,” said Abigail. “It would be lovely if it _was_ that way. But it isn’t.”

“Come downstairs,” said Octavia, holding out her hands and taking the baby into her arms. “Have tea.  The rest of the story you should hear from him.”

“It won’t change anything,” warned Abigail, following the younger woman downstairs, but Octavia only smiled. Indra glared at Abigail over her mother’s shoulder with a stony expression, as if to say, _You have no idea what you are talking about._

And Indra, as it happens, was right.

“I met the new priest at the rectory,” she began, once they were seated with their tea.

“Father Jasper!” said Bellamy. “We like him. He’s a good man.”

“He told me you didn’t live there anymore,” she said. “I thought he meant –“  She could not finish.

“You thought I was gone,” Marcus said, and even though there were three other people (and one exasperated baby) in the room watching them, a current passed between them, and she knew that he understood.

“Yes,” was all she said.

“Well,” he smiled. “It’s true. I _don’t_ live at the rectory. Because I’m not a priest anymore.”

Lincoln caught the teacup as it slipped out of her hand, nimbly snatching it out of thin air as it fell towards the floor and narrowly averting a crash. She didn’t even notice.

“You’re not a priest,” she whispered. He shook his head.

“No,” he said, “I’m not.”

“You left the priesthood,” she said, almost numbly, unable to comprehend the words. “You’re not a priest. You’re not –“

“I know,” he said, with a crooked smile. “It was quite a change for me as well.”

“Why?” she asked. “Why did you leave?” Marcus looked away, and she suddenly remembered that the room was full of people, and that there might be more to this question than he wanted the Blakes to hear, and blushed in spite of herself.

“It was no longer the life I wanted,” was all he said. “I was not that man. I was never that man. I began to realize I wanted a life that was very different.”

“And now he works here,” said Bellamy, smiling at him. “He hasn’t much of a feel for cows yet, but he can manage himself well enough with the vegetable patch, and he’s quite a prodigy as a shepherd.”

“Fitting,” said Lincoln dryly, and Marcus laughed.

“It’s true,” he said, “that does appear to be the only area of farming for which my previous employment prepared me. Though they’re not at all like they sound in the Bible, sheep. They’re stubborn and they smell a bit and they never come when they’re called.”

“Like men,” said Octavia, raising an eyebrow at her three farmhands, all of whom looked accusingly at each other. Abigail felt a weight inside her lift and realized that in some incomprehensible, unpredictable way, St. Brigid had become home to her. She had lived more than forty years on this earth and spent less than one of them on this island, and had been gone from it longer than she had lived there; yet there it was, she could not shake it, she belonged to these people, to this fiery young woman and her quiet husband and warm-hearted brother and to that oddly serious tiny baby.

And, of course, to Marcus.

Because that was the real reason, and it was useless to pretend any longer that it wasn't.

It was only home if Marcus was there.

“Marcus,” said Bellamy, in a calm voice that sounded as though he had rehearsed it, “one of us should walk the doctor back to her cottage to help her with that case. Would you like to, or should I?”

It was one suitcase, it weighed nearly nothing, she had carried it all the way from the docks already, so as an excuse it was a poor one.  Bellamy was not much of a liar, but perhaps Octavia had felt it would be too heavy-handed coming from her. But it did the job. Marcus rose immediately and took Abigail’s suitcase from the door.

“I would invite you back to join us for supper,” said Octavia, “but we keep early hours here in the winter and all of us are in bed just after dark. But it occurred to me that no one would have stocked up your larder, so I left a jug of ale and a cold meat pie at the cottage for you.”

“That was very kind of you,” said Abigail, surprised. “Thank you. I’m very grateful.”

"But you'll join us Friday," she said.  "For Christmas. I insist.  You cannot leave before Christmas."  Then she kissed Abigail's cheek and turned to Marcus. “We’re done for the evening, I think,” she said, “so there’s no need to worry about that fence-post tonight. Why don’t I just see you in the morning.”

She was much better at this than her brother.

* * *

They walked in silence for a few minutes, neither of them sure how to begin, both of them paralyzed by anticipation and nervousness. The sun set over the water, lighting up the sky with rose and gold and violet before sinking into the sea and cloaking them in indigo starlight. In the end it was Abigail who spoke first.

“So you’re a shepherd now,” she said.

“Farm hand, really,” he said. “It’s a little of everything.”

“How on earth did you end up here?”

He shrugged and smiled. “It was the only job open on the island,” he said. “Or, rather, I wanted to stay on the island, so I came to Blake Farm and asked Octavia if she had any work. She took a little persuading – since of course I had no idea what I was doing – but they needed the extra help, now that there’s the baby, and one of us has to be with her all the time. They only had two pairs of hands, and the farm needs three. And they're not so very religious as to be scandalized by hiring a former priest.”

“I’ll bet Mrs. Monroe was scandalized,” said Abigail, and Marcus laughed.

“Mrs. Monroe was _ecstatic_ ,” he said, “it was the best gossip she’s had in _years_. I thought it only fair, given how much I’ve come to rely on her as an all-knowing source of village news, to do her the service of letting her find out first.”

“You did what?” she exclaimed. “How?”

“I wrote my resignation letter to Bishop Collins and left the flap unsealed, as if by accident, and then one day when she was walking past the church toward the village I asked if she wouldn’t mind taking something very important to the post for me.”

“You didn’t.”

“I did,” he said merrily. “It was wonderful. It saved me having to tell anyone myself."

Abigail burst out laughing. Impulsively, Marcus reached out and took her hand. She did not let go of it, but she stopped walking, and turned to him.

“Marcus the shepherd,” she said softly. “You keep trying on different costumes to see if they fit. Who are you, with all that stripped away?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m trying to find out.” He looked at her steadily, his eyes so intense they held her captive, she could not look away. “I spent my whole life waiting for someone else to tell me who I was,” he said. “I was a soldier, taking orders from the British general. Then I was a priest, taking orders from the Bishop and from God. Now I’m a farm hand –“

“Taking orders from Octavia,” she said, and a smile flickered in his eyes.

“Exactly.”

“What makes this one different?” she said. “You keep rewriting the story of your own life. You keep running from the man you were before. How do you know you aren't making the same mistake again?”

“Because I’m not running,” he said. “I was small as a child, and awkward. I felt weak. I felt invisible. And so I became a soldier. I was fleeing from the memory of the boy I was before. And then when I took orders, I was fleeing from the memory of the things I did when I was a soldier.”

“And then you left the priesthood,” she said. He nodded.

“But I stayed here,” he said, and something clicked inside her and she realized that he was right. “I’ve been running all my life,” he said quietly. “I’m done running. This is where I live now. This is who I am. I’ve decided. Now it’s your turn, Abigail. You need to decide what you’re going to do.”

He was very close to her, his dark eyes warm and earnest, and she suddenly found herself unable to look directly at him. She removed her hand from his, gently but firmly, and kept walking down the sea road to her cottage. He followed her.

They did not speak until she had opened the door and stepped inside. It was dark, and freezing cold, and Abigail clutched her cloak tightly around her.

“Let me make up a fire for you,” he said, and she considered protesting, but didn’t. Her hands were too numb to do it herself, and she was busy slowly walking around the cottage, reacquainting herself with it. Nothing had changed – Octavia had clearly sent someone down in anticipation of her arrival to tidy it, so it was not even dusty. It was as though she had never left. It was as though they had wound back the clock and were reliving that December night twelve months ago, at midnight, when he had walked down the sea road, over her threshold and into her bed. She swallowed hard, remembering, and busied herself fidgeting with the folds of her cloak.

Marcus lit a fire in the large kitchen grate, and then looked at her with a question in his eyes. “Do you –“ He stopped, suddenly nervous, and collected himself. “The other fireplace,” he said. “Do you want a small fire in the other fireplace as well?”

“The other fireplace?” she asked, puzzled, and then she understood, and blushed furiously once she realized what he was really asking her.

The other fireplace was in her bedchamber.

And if she were sleeping alone, she would be cold.

She had not expected to have to decide quite so quickly.  Neither of them could look at each other.

“Why don’t I make up a fire in there anyway,” he said finally, “to take off the chill. And then –“

“And then, if I don’t need it,” she began, and stopped.

“Yes,” he agreed, “if you don’t need it –“

Neither of them knew how to finish that sentence, and in the end Marcus simply disappeared with a box of matches and a pile of peat and kindling into the other room, while Abigail reminded herself again how breathing worked.

He was gone for a long time, longer than the fire ought to take, longer than whatever respectful window he was giving her to collect herself. Long enough that she began to miss him, even though he was only a few feet away on the other side of the door. So she took off her cloak and went into the bedchamber, where she saw a merry fire blazing in the little hearth, and Marcus standing still as if rooted to the ground, staring at her bed.

She did not have to ask what he was thinking. It was written all over his face.

“Marcus,” she said softly, and he turned to her, startled, and she thought she saw tears in his eyes, though he hid it quickly.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I should never have – I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“No,” she said, “it’s all right. You’ve done nothing wrong.”

“Do you ever think about that night?” he asked, in a quiet voice.

“Sometimes I find it difficult to think of anything else,” she said honestly, and he met her eyes then, drawn in closer towards her. “But we can’t – Marcus, there can never be anything between us. It's all just too hard.”

“Why?” he asked seriously. “ _Why_ can’t there be?”

“You know why,” she said wearily. “There are so many reasons.”

“You kissed me on the road,” he pointed out.

“You kissed me.”

“But you kissed me back.”

"Because I thought I'd lost you," she said.  "When I went to the rectory and you were gone . . . I was afraid that I'd never see you again."

“I had those fears myself,” he said, and there was some deep pain buried darkly in his eyes, and that was the first moment that Abigail realized what it must have done to him when he came down to look for her the day after she received the Bishop's letter.  They had fought, and had both said terrible things, and he would have returned the next day to find the cottage empty, and Abigail gone, and he would not have even begun to know where to look for her.  She had been struck almost senseless with grief outside Father Jordan's door, but of course Marcus would have had no idea.  He would have assumed Father Jordan would tell her, "He lives at Blake Farm."  He would not have anticipated that Abigail would flee, in tears, before the younger man could finish his explanation.

It had been awful - one of the most awful moments of her life - and yet twelve months ago she had done it _deliberately_ to him.

“Marcus,” she said, and stopped as he took two long strides and seized her in his arms, one hand at her waist and one in her hair, and held her close as their bodies slowly got used to each other again.

“There,” he said. “Now there is nothing between us.”

“That,” said Abigail, in a crisp voice with the hint of a laugh behind it, “was not what I meant.”

He kissed the top of her head. “Ask me why I left,” he said.

“You told me why already.”

“No,” he said, “I didn’t. There are two answers to that question. The one I give to everyone else, and the one that belongs only to you.”

She pulled away just enough to tilt her head and look up at him, a faintly quizzical expression in her eyes.

“All right, then,” she said. “Tell me.”

“It isn’t the kind of thing that you _tell,_ precisely,” he said, as his eyes flickered downward to the swell of her white breasts, just visible inside the bodice of her crisp white blouse. “It’s more the kind of thing that you _show.”_

“Is it now?” she said, with a dangerous little smile, feeling her whole body begin to reawaken in his presence. He slipped his hands behind her back and began to unfasten the buttons, very slowly, one by one.

“Yes,” he said. “I suppose it’s less an answer and more a –“

“A demonstration.”

“Exactly,” he agreed, “a demonstration,” and whatever retort she might have made died on her lips, swallowed up by a rough gasp, as he pulled her blouse off her and slipped his hands beneath her chemise to caress her nipples with his thumbs. They roused and hardened under his caresses, and she pulled the chemise over her head impatiently, feeling the cool air on the skin of her breasts. In a heartbeat, his arms were around her waist, his mouth buried between her breasts, and Abigail forgot everything she had meant to say as his lips and teeth and tongue seized the soft flesh and brought her whole body to life with excruciating pleasure. She wrapped her hands in his soft, thick black hair, caressing his temples with her fingertips, stroking his scalp, and he moaned with pleasure into her breasts. Everywhere on his body was charged with sensation. Even her innocent touch in his hair shot fire through him.

“I’m beginning to see,” she murmured, as he took her breast inside his mouth and began to gently devour it, flicking at her hard brown nipple with his tongue, “why you were reluctant to have this conversation in front of the Blakes.”

“You see my point,” he said, kissing his way up from her breast to her throat.

“Yes,” she said, “I certainly see your point,” and she seized his mouth back to hers. Between frantic kisses, she tugged fruitlessly at his coat and sweater until he pulled away from her just long enough to shed them, along with his trousers and boots. She made good use of the interval herself, to shed her own boots and stockings and her heavy woolen skirt.

“Abigail,” he began, but she shook her head.

“Hush,” she said. “Let me look at you. I want to look at you.”

He swallowed hard and looked away, and she saw him move away from her, just a little, reaching out behind him for the wall, as if for security, and there was a shyness to him, a timidity, that completely dismantled her heart.  The flickering firelight only partially reached him, bronzing his skin and dimming the hair on his chest and between his thighs until it was as black as the night sky.  He was so beautiful. He was so _real,_ right in front of her, and that was the moment that she realized there would always be two sides to Marcus Kane, that there would always be the shadow side, the man with the rifle he used to be, the man who had done unspeakable things, but there was this other man inside his eyes too, this man who was so uncertain of his welcome that he had not known whether to make her a fire, who could be rendered mute by red dresses, who tripped and fell right in front of her on his way to bring her butter for tea, whose mouth set her entire body on fire whenever it touched her skin. She could live with the shadow Marcus, she thought, if he did not mind the shadow Abigail too.

She held out her hand to him.

"Come into the light, Marcus," she said.  "Come here.  Where I can see you."

And slowly, uncertainly, he moved closer to her, not all the way, but a little, towards the fire, towards warmth, towards Abigail, just close enough to take her hand.  But he still could not meet her gaze, and the next thing he said startled her.

“I will never not be the man who shot your husband,” he said abruptly, and that was the first moment she realized that he saw the ghost of Jacob Griffin there standing between them.

She was too honest not to acknowledge it.  “I know,” she said simply. “I know.  But that is not the only man you are.”

“How can you bear to look at me?” he said, eyes fixed on the floor.

“We made choices,” she said. “You. Me. Thelonious. I suppose we none of us have clean hands. But the only person who made Jacob Griffin pick up his gun and join the Rising was Jacob Griffin.  He made his choice too.  There were never three of us in that execution yard, Marcus, there were always four.  Jacob paid too.  Jacob made his own choice.  All of us did the thing we believed we had to do.  You were right, what you said to me in Athenry.  It was bigger than all of us.  We each played our parts.  But none of us could ever have stopped it."  He still could not look at her, shifting his weight uncomfortably from side to side, and she could see his desire to cover himself, to turn his nakedness away from her searching gaze, to step out of the firelight and backwards into the shadows, and she knew then that this, this was why he needed her. And why she needed him.

"Marcus," she said gently.  "We cannot live in the dark forever."  And she tugged at his hand, pulling him towards her, and kissed his mouth.

His arms wrapped around her, powerful and strong, holding her small body close against his, and she felt the heat begin to rise between them as she kissed her way from his mouth to his chest.  They stumbled backwards and were on the bed before they even realized it, a tangle of dark hair and writhing limbs.  He had been so gentle with her, that first time a year ago, so tender.  It had been all giddy discovery and exploration.  But this time, they both knew somehow without speaking the words that that was not how they wanted it. It had been a long and lonely year since the last time, a year of cold empty beds and torturous dreams, and they were both half-starved for the other's touch.

“We have all night to go slowly,” she whispered into his ear, pressing hot kisses against his neck, and felt him tense up against her. “But right now, I just need you. Please, Marcus, I need you.”

He swallowed hard, and nodded, and in a heartbeat, he was inside her.

As many nights as they had both remembered the way this felt, it paled beside the tactile reality. He had forgotten that she smelled like rosemary. She had forgotten the hot salt taste of his skin. He thrust with his whole body, and she did too. She felt him slide all the way inside her, up to the hilt, felt herself filled to the brim, felt herself soften and expand around him to take in more and more and more, felt his hands slide down between her back and the mattress to cup her soft buttocks and pull her even closer, even deeper. “Yes,” she breathed into his neck, “yes.” It was all she could say. It was the only word her mouth was capable of forming. “Yes,” as he pulled ever so slightly out of her and then thrust back into her again, pinning her against the bed, “yes” as he took one breast in his mouth, suckling and devouring and caressing the rock-hard little brown nipple with his hungry tongue, “yes, yes, yes,” as he slipped a hand down between her thighs. He pulsed and surged and shuddered to his own completion, then stroked her to her own, bringing the first of the night’s climaxes to her from both directions. She cried out his name as she shuddered against him and he clutched her in his arms as she sank back, sated and trembling, against the mattress.

He held her like that for a long moment, their bodies hot and sweaty against the bed's heavy blankets, as they breathed each other in.  Marcus buried his mouth in her throat and kissed the hollow over her clavicle, which made her shiver, and ran an idle fingertip through the dark, damp hair between her thighs.

"You need to give me a minute to breathe first," she said accusingly, "before you try to start all over again."

"I can't help it," he said.  "We have a great deal of lost time to make up for."  And he slipped a finger gently, almost lazily, around her still desperately sensitive center, then grinned and kissed her as she bucked and flinched.  She was still so wet and so tender that it took hardly any time at all for him to stir her to a second, gentler, climax, leaving her entire body blissfully heavy and drowsy and hot against his.

"For a man who voluntarily undertook a vow of celibacy," she said, burrowing into his chest, "you're remarkably deft with those hands."

"I was a priest," he said wryly, kissing the top of her head.  "Not a saint."

She burst out laughing and kissed him back as she pulled away, stood, and walked over to open the window.

"We certainly won't be needing that fire," she said

"No, I don't think we will."

He grinned at her as he lay there in her bed, tousled and sweaty, while the frosty December air poured in around them to cool their overheated skin.  "You know," she said thoughtfully, “you may not be a priest anymore but we’re both still Catholic. You could have saved us both a good few years in Purgatory for this if you’d asked me to marry you first.  That was very careless of you."

“Didn’t I?” he said, surprised. “I meant to. Damn. Stay there.”

"Marcus," she said, not sure if he was teasing her, but he bolted out of the bed.

"Don't move," he said.  "Stay where you are.  I had a plan.  I just got distracted.  Stay right where you are."

So she did.  She stood by the window and she watched Marcus Kane - priest, soldier, shepherd - as he hunted all over the floor for his trousers like a naked idiot, and she loved him so desperately at that moment that she thought her heart might burst inside her chest.

Finally, with an exclamation of triumph, he located them, and reached into the pocket to pull out a small silver band, which he brought over to her where she stood at the window, and she felt the cold play of starlight against her skin as he slipped the silver ring onto her finger.

“It’s beautiful,” she said, admiring the intricate etched pattern of vines and blossoms that wove around it.  "It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen." 

"It's the _second_ most beautiful thing I've ever seen," he said in reply, and Abigail could not keep the tears from coming as he wrapped her in his arms.

“This,” he said. “This was the reason. Why I left the priesthood, why I left that life. I didn’t know until that night at Blake Farm, the night Indra was born, when I saw what the Blakes had. I didn’t know what I wanted.” He kissed her mouth, then, long and sweet and slow.

“ _You_ were the miracle,” he said to her. “I didn’t need the robes and the collar anymore. I didn’t need to go searching. The miracle was always you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're seeing these notes, then you've arrived at the end of all thirty-whatever thousand words of this story which means THANK YOU, I LOVE YOU, YOU GIVE ME LIFE, sorry I put you through the ringer with all those goddamn Kabby feels.
> 
> A few historical, theological and geographic notes. 
> 
> Ireland is my favorite country on earth and I wanted to try to do justice to its rich, complex history. So within the bounds of reason, I tried my hardest to be SUPER respectful of accuracy - while strivng to remember, when I got bogged down, that a detailed timeline of the struggle for Irish independence was not why I was writing this story or why any of you were reading it. SO.
> 
> Here is a rundown of Real Vs. Made-Up Stuff.
> 
> The 1916 Easter Rising was real (so named because it began on Easter Monday), and I kept as close as I could to the actual events. The majority of the insurgents were in Dublin, of which one group was called the Citizen Army, led by a man named James Connolly. The part about the British bombing Liberty Hall to the ground only to find out later that the republicans had tunneled underground to hide in the Post Office is true. After realizing they had no way out, all sixteen rebel leaders surrendered and were executed. Jake, Jaha, Kane and Abby's roles are obviously fictional but overall, that's more or less how it happened. 
> 
> Also, because Ireland was under British rule at that time, there would have been plenty of Irish-born citizens who served in the British army.
> 
> I am a lifelong Catholic and worked at a church for years (AND NOW I'M WRITING KANE PRIEST PORN, WHAT IS MY LIFE), so the theology and Scripture stuff, like the description of Anointing of the Sick, is all legit. I fudged slightly on Church bureaucracy (the Vatican would appoint Irish bishops, not the Crown, though I’m sure there was backdoor politics from time to time). Tensions between Crown loyalists and supporters of an independent Ireland complicated Church politics in Ireland long before and after the Rising. 
> 
> I know a little about priest tribunals; if a parish wants their priest removed, they submit a petition to a panel of three priests who review the case and decide. So I chose to roll with the idea that it's the same, but higher stakes, for bishops, and that Kane might consult a canon lawyer - not JUST to give Jasper a chance to be a boy genius, but not NOT because of that. 
> 
> Breaking the seal of the confessional is an ENORMOUSLY big deal. A priest is forbidden to reveal anything you confess – even an unreported crime, even under subpoena. He can urge you to turn yourself in, but he can’t call the police, even if you confess to murder. TL;DR, Thelonious is the worst.
> 
> I just recently learned the thing about Gethsemane being on a hill so Jesus would have witnessed the whole slow leadup to his own betrayal and it BLEW MY MIND. It felt like the cruelest comparison Abby could possibly make in that moment so obviously it had to make it into the story.
> 
> In real life it takes 10-11 years of discernment, seminary, mission work and a novitiate period to become a fully-ordained Jesuit. While I have no idea how long it took in Ireland in 1920, I'm PRETTY sure I compressed the timeline pretty significantly. I am equally sure, however, that I'm the only person reading through this thinking, "FOR FUCK’S SAKE, KANE'S PRIEST FORMATION CHRONOLOGY IS A MESS."
> 
> The song "The Fields of Athenry" is from the 1970s, although it describes events from the late 1700s, so I felt free to pretend like it was actually written during the period it was set in. The first version I ever heard is a haunting rendition (retitled "Bad News") from the soundtrack to the movie "Veronica Guerin." But it is also the Galway County football song, which means I learned the words to it on a trad music night at a pub thirteen years ago (when I was a college student spending a semester in Galway) surrounded by drunk bros shouting call-and-response lines to the singer. I love it with all my heart. 
> 
> St. Brigid is the real patron saint of Ireland (along with Patrick, obvs) but the island and village are fictional, loosely based on a sort of mashup of the Aran Islands and the fishing villages in the Ring of Kerry.
> 
> IN CONCLUSION: I am a nerd, thank you for reading.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Amid the Winter Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/works/5455502) by [ChancellorGriffin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin)




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